


A Blonde Moment

by Eoraptor



Series: A Blonde Moment [1]
Category: Kim Possible (Cartoon)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Community: Kim Possible Slash Haven, Drama, Dubious Consent, F/F, F/M, Hair Washing, Humor, KiGo, Mad Science, Mind Control, Romance, season 4, some smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-24
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-09 03:52:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 72,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15258822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eoraptor/pseuds/Eoraptor
Summary: Kim is subjected to a life changing cosmetic mishap when Drakken sneaks a new bottle into her shower, Shego finds out about life without plasma, and Ron meets a changed Yori. Response to a KPslashHaven challenge. KiGo, some cursing and sexual innuendo/activity. Complete Plus Epilogue.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Boring but important Legal Stuff: Kim Possible and all related characters are copy write 2002-2007 Walt Disney Corporation. Kim Possible created by Mark McCorkle and Bob Schooley. (Thank them for their hard work by buying the DVD’s, not downloading illegally!)  
> The work contained herein is not-for-profit and solely for the enjoyment of the fans. No redistribution without the author’s consent is allowed. This fic is voluntarily rated R for adult themes. If the material here is illegal where you’re located or you’re not mature enough to handle it: don’t complain to Disney, the moderators of the site this is hosted on, or me; JUST DON’T READ IT!  
> Less boring and still important stuff: This story is not a part of “The Darkness Within” continuum. It’s a response to one of the fan-issued challenges at (http://www.kpslashhaven.net)

Kim turned the handles of the shower and hummed the latest Brittina single as she waited for the water to come up to her favored steaming temperature. She opened her long pink bathrobe and hung it up on the proper hook on the back of the bathroom door. Wincing suddenly as her arm stretched up over her head a moment, she moved it again, turning towards the vanity over the sink to see why it hurt.

 

                “Darn it Shego!” She clicked her teeth together, examining the purple bruise under her left armpit and across the side of her breast, remembering the sharp kick she had failed to fully catch. “Guess no tank-top for me for a few days… Grrrr and it’s going to be hot today too!”

 

                Sighing and pausing to make sure the damage wasn’t more severe now that adrenaline rush of the evening before had worn off and allowed her to feel pain again, Kim lowered her arm and turned back to the shower, which was now generating the wanted amount of steam. She tugged aside the shower door and stepped gingerly inside, letting the pale freckled skin of her leg adjust to water just a few degrees short of scalding.

 

                “Mmmmmmm… that’s the stuff!” she sighed contently and ran her head and shoulders under the water. After a few moments Kim was practically purring, feeling the pulsating, spinning jets of her special shower-head massage her scalp and power away a night’s work full of sweat that had dried there during her sleep.

 

                A few more moments of self-indulgent soaking and she reached for the bodywash bottle and squirted out a heavy dallop. She knew if she took _too_ long in here, the twins would come pounding at the bathroom door and demand their turn. She scrubbed herself down with the shower puff, ridding her freckled skin of sweat and dirt, and letting the soothing cucumber-melon scent help her to relax in lieu of a much longer shower. Paying careful attention to her latest contusion, She scrubbed away a bit more, and finally rinsed her lean body off, cooing again as the steaming water rinsed away exfoliated skin and most of the evidence of her nemesis’s handiwork.

 

Long red hair hanging down across her eyes, she felt around the small shower stall for the shampoo. Finally she grabbed it and squeezed some out into her hands. She frowned when she was not once-more met with the scent of cucumber-melon, but remembered that the tweebs had said they spilled it the day before.

 

“Well at least they replaced it… Bubblegum isn’t horrible anyways,” She began working the shampoo into her hair, and sighed again in relaxation.

 

“Mmmmmm, I’ll have to ask them where they got this stuff… it feels good. Kinda tingly actually!” Rubbing her hands through her hair, scratching short nails across her scalp, and relishing the fresh feeling, Kim smiled lightly and began humming again.

 

By the time she had got through Brittina’s single again, she decided that was probably long enough and that she was definitely running danger of interruption of her allotted fifteen minutes shower time. She turned her back to the shower head and tossed her sudsy hair back, allowing the shower beater to work the shampoo from her hair and at the same time massage tense shoulders.

 

Caressing fingers through her hair, sweeping it back to remove more of the bubblegum-scented stuff, she marveled at how silky it felt this morning. Finally feeling the last of the suds gone, she sighed and turned about one last time to remove any residual bodywash or shampoo.

 

Giggling as she turned the water off, she stepped out of the stall and tossed her hair back, artfully wrapping long tresses up into a towel without so much as a glance at the uselessly steamed up mirror. “Tim’s girlfriend must be teaching him something right on those trips to the mall.”

 

Reaching up and not wincing as much this time, she drew her robe back about her and tied it snuggly about her, turning to open the door and egress the bathroom. As she did her eyes caught a flash of purple in the dressing-mirror mounted to the door. Something tickled the back of her brain. Where did she remember a purple bottle from?

 

Even as she heard the requisite knock at the bathroom door, she was turning back, and looking at the purple smear she could make out through the frosted shower door. With growing trepidation, Kim stepped back to the stall and opened it.

 

There, right where she had set it after squeezing out a generous handful of the stuff; sat the purple bottle of shampoo.

 

“Dr. Drakken’s NEW AND IMPROVED Lather, Rinse, Obey! A Shampoo, Conditioner, and Mind Control Serum in one bottle!”

 

Kim started panting, remembering the now suddenly disturbing tingle she’d felt in her scalp when she’d washed. “Oh crap! Oh no! nononononono!”

 

As one of the tweebs now pounded on the door, she scrabbled at the towel balanced on her head, and stared into the mirror in utter shock at what was revealed beneath as it unraveled and allowed thick hair to spill out. She smeared her hand across the fogged vanity mirror, stared at her visage, and shrieked.

 

(Cue Kim Possible theme)


	2. Sunglasses and Dust Bunnies

“Hey KP, you ready to go? The early bird gets the Double Chimerito combo!” Ron let himself into the Possible household as usual and called out into the living room. Things were quiet. Almost too quiet.

 

“KP? Kim? Anyone at all?” Ron slowly spun around, wondering how a house with three teenagers could possibly be this still on a Saturday morning.

 

Rufus popped his head out of Ron’s deep cargo pocket and pointed at the door and its turning knob, tugging Ron’s shirt-tail. Ron looked over and smiled broadly as the Possible clan entered. “Did I miss breakfast already guys?”

 

His smile quickly faded as he saw the concern on Mr. Dr. Possible’s face. Behind him the tweebs were entering, fairly subdued as well. Finally he saw Kim’s mom coming up the path with… someone.  

 

She was wearing a brown head-scarf and theatrically-large dark glasses, and she was wrapped up in a trench coat. Were the Possibles hosting Brittina incognito over night again? Must be, he saw a few blonde strands under the scarf.

 

“Hey, Dr. P, where’s Kim at?” The disguised figure that was hunched against Anne Possible looked up, and then ducked behind her slightly, peeking out at Ron from behind the brain surgeon.

 

“Oh, hey, Brittina, how’s it going? Didn’t know you were in town!” Suddenly Ron blushed and lowered his voice, “Ooops, sorry, guess you’re trying to hide out huh?”

 

“Ronald, come back in the house please.” It was KP’s dad, and he sounded both very stern and very concerned.

 

Ron blinked confusedly and did as he was told. “Um, sure Dr. P…. So, where’s KP? And what’s with all the hush hush, you’ve hosted a pop-star before, it’s no big.”

 

Finally Mrs. Dr. P. and guest made it inside and shut the door. She looked over at Ron as the mystery woman stayed behind her. “Ron… dear… Maybe you better sit down.”

 

Ron was starting to get one of those uneasy feelings… the kind he got when the universe decided it was time to mess with his head. The last time he felt like this was when KP had had that darned modulator attached to her back. Nothing had made sense that weekend.

 

“Uh… Okay… Rufus?” He looked to his perpetual companion for support, but the naked mole rat shrugged and ran to perch on his shoulder. He peered at the newcomer with beady little eyes and sniffed the air.

 

“Ron, dear… that’s not Brittina.” Anne sat down in her favorite chair and the mysterious girl in shawl and glasses sat down next to Ron tentatively.

 

He turned to look at her a little more closely. He was confused then, because none of KP’s other friends was blonde except for him. He watched her carefully untie the scarf, and let down some seriously flowing blonde hair. Ron admired it, and was convinced that it fit the description “shimmering” quite well.

 

Then the mystery woman took off her large dark glasses and Ron smiled politely. Then he blinked. He blinked again, still not quite comprehending what he was seeing, or who rather. Finally the green eyes he _should_ have known the moment he saw them began to fill with tears and she sobbed loudly, collapsing against the opposite arm of the couch.

 

“KP? KP! K.P.!” Ron jumped back in shock, and that only made Kim sob even more loudly.

 

“I knew it! I’m hideous! I’m a freak! I look like Camille Leon on a ferociously bad hair day!” She bawled loudly, smacking the arm of the couch and whimpering.

 

“Kim, honey it’s not that bad really… Look, nothing seems to be wrong aside from a little follicle damage. It’ll grow back hon.” Anne tried to soothe her daughter’s pain, but it seemed that nothing was getting through to her. She began to wonder if maybe all the brain scans and blood work could be wrong.

 

Ron finally, nervously, began to move over and pull Kim into a hug, making her put her head on his shoulder instead of the arm of the couch. He could see he wasn’t going to get much of an answer from her in her current state, so he looked to Mrs. P.

 

“…?”

 

“Someone tried to do something to Kimmie’s mind Ron. But instead all it did was turn her platinum blonde.” A renewed wail from Kim against Ron’s rapidly dampening shoulder greeted that.

 

“Ronald… Do you know anything about this Drak-co shampoo? Lather, Rinse-”

 

“…Obey.” Ron finished for him, his blue eyes widening as he turned to see Mr. Dr. Possible coming down the stairs with a purple bottle in his hand. “Well, at least he took his ugly mug off the bottle this time.”

 

“Yes, they say its ‘New and Improved’ whatever that means?” James Possible looked askance at the bottle and finally handed it over to Ron.

 

Ron dragged his kimmunicator out of another pocked and tapped it on, having to hold it away from him a little as Kim continued to whimper inconsolably on his now well and truly soaked shirt. He was a little shocked to see Wade sitting on the French Riviera with his mother and father, all three sunning themselves. “Wade, buddy?”

 

“Oh, hey Ron! Sorry, family picnic day. Mom insisted on somewhere exotic, but my Hawaii program is out on loan to the Smithsonian. What’s up?”

 

“Big trouble Wade, someone got to KP last night… I need you to scan this. Chemical, spectrical, meta-whatever-ical, the works!” Ron sat the purple bottle in question on the table in front of him and showed the kimmunicator to it.

 

Hearing the words ‘ _someone got to KP’_ got Wade right out of beach mode, and he ran across the span of his gigantic room to his computer. A second later a green beam shot out of Ron’s com and swept up and down over the bottle.

 

He whistled slightly at whatever he was seeing and Ron turned the smart-phone back to face him, again having to raise it over the ball of blonde and tears in his lap.

 

“It’s new and improved all right, Ron. I’ve never even seen half the stuff that’s in here… It’s going to take me a few days to figure out. Is Kim all right? What happened? Was she exposed to this stuff?” the concern showed in their chubby dark-skinned friend’s face as he looked back through the little device to Ron.

 

“KP’s a little out of it right now Wade,” Ron carefully petted Kim’s hair, as though her weren’t entirely sure it wouldn’t attack him. “…but I think she’ll be fine.”

 

“Can I see her?”

 

Another renewed round of sobbing came from Kim, who had by now collapsed completely into Ron’s lap and was rapidly soaking his cargo pants with her unstoppable tears.

 

“I don’t think now’s the best time Wade… I’ll call you back.” Wade clicked off the kimmunicator and laid it on the couch next to them. Carefully, and still slightly cautiously, he stroked Kim’s hair and tried to maneuver her into a position that would at least be a little more comfortable for him.

 

“Kim? Come on… cheer up? For me?” It disturbed Ron to see the girl who could do anything reduced to a blubbering mess. “Um…. Rufus? Lil help here?”

 

Rufus scurried out from his hiding place behind one of the cushions and sniffed at Kim’s flaxen locks. He made a face and was rewarded with a particularly deep wail from Kim, who collapsed against Ron so completely that their combined weight almost tipped the couch backwards.

 

“Shhhhhh, it’s all right Kim, I’m sure he meant the shampoo, not you… Right little buddy?” He eyed Rufus in a way to suggest that if his answer was anything other than ‘yes,’ that he would be sleeping with a certain hairless feline for the next week.

 

Rufus nodded readily, and Ron gently lifted Kim’s chin in his fingers. “Come on now hon. Let me see…”

 

Reluctantly she looked up at him, green eyes downcast as she sniffled and shook in his hands. He took in her radically altered appearance concernedly, gently stroking her cheek. Even her eyebrows and lashes had gone to a shimmering golden shade of platinum.  Finally he pecked her on the lips and smiled, caressing her cheek in his hand.

 

“It’s not so bad… So you’ll look like Tara and Cindy for a few weeks. Could be worse… that stuff smells like bubble gum, so your hair could be pink!” He smiled stupidly at her, and finally earned a weak smile in return.

 

“I knew I kept you around for some reason.” She returned the tiny kiss softly and lay against him once more, “Sorry I over reacted… it’s just…”

 

“Hey, if someone had snuck into _my_ bathroom and changed all my stuff around, I’d be tweaked to!”

 

“Ron, I’ve seen your bathroom, _no one_ would want to sneak in there… under _any_ circumstances.” She gave him a teasing grin and kissed his cheek, giggling past her sniffles.

 

“Hey, not fair, I just cleaned in there!”

 

“Yeah, at Chanukah time!”

 

“So?”

 

“So… Ron, this is May!” She sat back in his lap and gave him a mock horrified look.

 

“Oh.”

 

The sound of a throat being cleared behind them startled both teens, and Kim rapidly scooted out of Ron’s lap to sit more demurely on the couch next to him. Ron, for his part, tried to cover up his tear stained lap by crossing his legs, and succeeded in somehow ending up on the floor, the damp cargo’s in question tangled about his ankles.

 

This got a good-natured chuckle from Mrs. Possible, and Rufus scurried down to try to help his owner up.

 

“Sorry Kids… I didn’t mean to interrupt… I just got off the phone with the hospital. Dr. Clay still doesn’t see anything on the tests other than a little skin and hair bleaching.”

 

_‘Of course I did mean to interrupt, I know Kim’s almost eighteen and all, but that doesn’t mean I have to be okay with her sitting in some boy’s lap on my couch. Even if it is Ron!’_

“Are you sure mom?   I mean… it _tingled!_ ” Kim’s large green eyes pleaded for her mom to declare in no uncertain terms that yes, everything would be fine.

 

“As sure as I can be Kimmie… now why don’t you and Ron come and have some coffee? It’s been a rough morning already. You practically made poor Tim wet himself when you opened that door you know!” She giggled softly, and Kim also chuckled after a moment, self-consciously stroking her platinum locks.

 

“Ron, still in a pile on the floor and trying to wriggle back into his cargo pants, piped up, “Hey, my uncle over at the insurance company needs some help stuffing envelopes. Maybe you could hide out there this weekend, see if it changes back?”

 

“Yeah Ron, first pink hair, then selling insurance… you’re a real help today.” She smirked at his backside and got up, picking up the sunglasses and the shawl and following her mom to the kitchen.

 

As Ron was busy refastening his pants from their fast-release Velcro strips, he looked up at Kim to make sure she was okay. He saw her retreating to the kitchen, and blinked a little bit. Was she swaying her hips?

 

\---

 

“So… where is she?” Shego was busily filing down her nails, blowing on them occasionally as she lounged atop a newly arrived crate of Drak-co hygiene products. “Shouldn’t she be here by now if this new shampoo worked on her? I still say it was a stupid idea keeping the name.”

 

“Silence Shego! This is merely the first step in my plan! Once Kim Possible has been brought under my control…”

 

“Yeah… Don’t see her yet. So let me know how that turns out, kay?” Without further consideration of the burgeoning rant, the green master thief let herself out the side door.

 

Once she was safely out of earshot, his _or_ hers, she groaned and smacked her gloved hand over her face. “Oy… Stupidest. Plan. Ever! He doesn’t even try anymore for crying out loud! I swear if he goes on about how the conditioner accelerates the hypno-chlorides or whatever; I’m going to brain wash him! The hard way!”

 

Her hands ignited and she punched twin holes in the wall, physically expressing her frustration and then snuffing her hands out to tug her talons through her hair. “He doesn’t even care that we did this one already! _Or_ that we already did the stupid under-water base thing! Wait a minute… under water- ”

 

Shego was greeted by twin jets of sea water and was blasted across the room as pressure alarms whooped and doors sealed. “Oh, sunuva- How could I forget that?”

 

Sodden, she got to her feet and looked around, already feeling cold ocean waters flooding in around her ankles. Finally she spied a hatch in the ceiling and scurried up the ladder to it, wheeling it open and slipping through before wheeling it closed again.

 

She sat up and looked around curiously, shaking her boots out one at a time as she peeled them off and drained the ocean from each. Setting them aside for a moment and wiping iridescent black tresses back from her face, she decided to do a little exploring.

 

Boxes labeled Diablo, Wisconsin, Moodulator #2, Mind chip 1.1, Truthiness Ray… and many, many more lined the walls almost to the ceiling.

 

“Oh my god… I must have gotten into the warehouse!” Shego looked around, a dark little feeling of triumph and forbidden pleasure sweeping over her. Drakken never let her in here; never let her see the evidence of his failed plans once they were shelved.

 

She fingered a few of the boxes as she walked along, hearing the alarms below dimly through the insulated floor. “God, he even insulated the floors and walls. Dr D. _really_ didn’t want me finding this place.”

 

As she went, she would occasionally pause and open up one of the boxes, peering inside at some failed scheme and long-forgotten device. She picked up the truthiness ray and twirled it cowboy style as she walked through the asiles of brown cardboard and silver duct tape. Grunting suddenly, she stubbed her now-bare toe on a box that was not completely pushed in and the yellow ray gun went off, zapping her full on in the face.

 

“Darn it Dr. D… you never put your toys away when you’re finished! I’m surprised the things always work!”

 

Shego blinked and stopped, as if the bolt she’d just been struck with had come from the heavens’, not a cheap ray gun. She turned, looking back down the long corridor full of boxes and crates. She opened her mouth to test a theory.

 

“Each of these things does exactly what it’s supposed to.”

 

And again, “Dr. Drakken is a mechanical genius.”

 

Ewww, she didn’t like that one! Shego made a sour face and decided to try one more time.

 

“He just isn’t an _evil_ genius.”

 

She finally intoned in her best Charlton Hesston voice, “…And the truth shall set you free…”

 

Shego grinned a slow, dangerous grin and looked down at the chintzy-looking yellow blaster pistol in her hands. A little forced psycho-therapy had just given her a major breakthrough. It wasn’t Drakken’s stuff that always failed… it was Dr Drakken himself.

 

The Diablo-bots, the continent collider, that expensive syntho-drone that Kimmie had fallen for, his artificially intelligent blue kill-bots, the magma gun that was supposed to turn Wisconsin into a volcano, they all worked exactly as advertised. It was the hair-brained plots that never panned out.

 

Even the devices he stole and rewired worked just as he promised that they would. Mind control chips had _definitely_ turned her and Possible into cheery eager puppets for his every whim; the enlarging ray from Area 51 had done exactly that, magnifying Commodore Puddles to great and terrible effect. Even Dementor didn’t have a track record like that.

 

Shego’s dangerous smirk widened as she decided to give one more thought a run through the old truthiness ray. “I could rob the world blind with this stuff!”

 

And she could. She just needed to wait twenty-four hours for the yellow ray to wear off before she went back to face blue-boy.

 

“No I don’t. I can just scare him into submission and take what I want! I didn’t drop out of college like he did, and a little child psych always does work wonders!”

 

_Thank you truthiness ray._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Notes Additional: Truthiness Ray comes from the half-episode “Truth Hurts,” although there it was just a truth ray… for more info on the word truthiness, check out Wikipedia. I figured that since Kim and Ron seem to spout things off in that episode ‘without conscious thought, scientific evidence, or logic’, it must be more “truthy” than “truth.”
> 
> And yes, strangely enough, Shego at some point earned a degree in Child Development… though whether it was a B.S or a Masters has yet to be revealed, I wonder what her alma mater is?


	3. “Bottle Blondes”

 

_Beep beep ba beep_

 

“Wade, please tell me you’ve got something… Kim is still way freaked about her ha-,”

 

“Her what?” Wade eyed Ron, who had yet to actually tell him what the new improved LRO shampoo had done to Kim. Finally he gave up the battle of prolonged silence and tapped away at his keyboard again. “Fine fine… don’t tell me. Just don’t lose that kimmunicator, it’s the only one Kim has right now.”

 

“It’s cool my man… I wouldn’t lose Kim’s only kim’com. Hey wait, doesn’t she have like a dozen of these things?” Ron eyed the little blue smart phone a little perplexedly. Rufus scurried down his arm a moment later to join in the examination of the ubiquitous smart-phone.

 

“Well, after the moodulator chip, Kim and I decided maybe we better start working on a more unique looking design. One _someone_ wouldn’t mistake for any other kind of controller or video game. So she got rid of almost all the older versions as a precaution.”

 

Ron looked suddenly very uncomfortable, recalling how mistaking the green moodulator controller for the blue kimmunicator, and then letting the boys mess with it had resulted in Kim forcing feelings to the surface in him as well as in herself. Sure, it eventually led indirectly to what happened at Jr. Prom, but it was a seriously boneheaded move on his part.

 

“Yeah… um… Precaution… So anyways, got news on the shampoo?”

 

“Well, I can tell you what it isn’t. It isn’t Drakken’s old mind-control formula. There’s nothing in here that would result in the same zombie effects. Unfortunately, that’s about all I can tell you. The sample you scanned for me is off at various government labs being analyzed right now.” Wade looked more than a little defeated at having to call in outside help, and Ron could tell by the way his dark eyes wouldn’t meet the camera for a moment.

 

“ooooh kaaaaaay. Wade, this is so not bueno. What if there’s more of this stuff out there? Noene of the Possible clan know how it got into the shower, and Kim took Shego to jail _before_ she got home, so it couldn’t have been her.”

 

“Yeah, I know. Shego didn’t even break out until early this morning, Ron. And… Wait, Just got something…” Wade’s face seemed to pale slightly from its normal mocha color to something slightly ashen, “Ron, there’s more of it out there all right! Drak-co Body Wash, Drak-co Cologne for Men, Drak-co Baby Oil, Even something called Dr D’s Miracle Foot Stone. Man, this stuff is world Wide!”

 

“Oh man! This is so not good! We don’t even know what this stuff does other than turn your hair blonde and- Oooops!” Ron slapped his free hand over his mouth and Rufus did the same, clapping a small paw over his snout and muttering.

 

“Blonde? That’s what Kim’s big sitch is? Gosh, the way you two were going on I thought it turned her purple and made her toe-nails fall out or something.” Wade was very visibly relieved on the small kimmunicator screen, “Seriously, Kim is blonde? Are we talking Ron blonde, or Brittina Blonde?”

 

Ron wasn’t sure he liked the look in Wade’s eyes as he leaned closer on the com’s screen. “Um, Kim really doesn’t want _anyone_ knowing about this, okay Wade? She’s righteously freaked as it is.”

 

“Whoa, Kim as a blonde! This is so major news. Do you know how many people are fans of hers cause of her look? People really dig the red hair… Well, then there’s those rumors about her and Shego, but that’s a whole other-,”

 

“Whoa! TMI, TMI! That’s my girlfriend you’re talking about Wade! That’s just sick and wrong! The internet is just full of wrongsick people!” Ron was actually trying to use both hands to cover the kimmunicator and the words coming out of it out of shock and embarrassment about what some people might think about his best friend since Pre-K.

 

Wade coughed on screen, and tried to put aside the typical imaginings of a fourteen year old boy for a minute to be a professional, “Yeah, well, I’m just saying. But I’ll send a distribution list to the kimmunicator. But this stuff is all over now! It’s going to be real hard to get it off store shelves before anyone else ends up a bottle blonde bombshell. And we don’t even know what Lather, Rinse, Obey shampoo and conditioner does yet, let alone the other stuff.”

 

“You do that Wade… All though… Maybe if I snuck some of this stuff to Bonnie Rockwaller…” A devious grin spread over Ron’s lips as he plotted a little payback for the way she had razzed him for fumbling the ball on Friday.

 

“Now who’s wrongsick, Ron? Okay, there’s the file, gotta go.” Wade smirked archly and blinked off the small screen as Ron pouted, his better morals speaking up through the computer kid’s voice.

 

“D’oh… Little buddy, sometimes I think Shego’s got it easy, she doesn’t have to play by the rules.”

 

Rufus stuck his tongue out at his human and shook his head before retreating from the blank kimmunicator and back down to his nest in the left cargo pocket of Ron’s pants.  


\-----

 

Shego’s green eyes were wide, just before they faded and transformed into a deep chocolate brown and she took a henchman’s power-pole across the chin. Spitting out a pink mixture of blood and saliva, she stared at Dr Drakken and tried to wipe her painfully split lip. The goon holding her left hand securely was having none of it, and gave her another jab with the pole to make sure she held still.

 

“What did you do to me you blue skinned dork?!” She eyed the azure doctor and scowled, knowing that he must be behind her sudden power-failure. Of course, it couldn’t have come at a worse time… She was high on truthiness ray and hell bent on taking over the operation.

 

“Oh, Shego, Shego, Shego… did you like that new after-bath powder?” He smiled a sick little smile of triumph as he watched her lips start moving before she could even think of a response.

 

“Yeah, it was nice, kind of tingled…” Her eyes flashed angrily and she yanked again at the goons holding her back, “You pucker-faced son of- You used one of those damned concoctions on me… DIDN’T YOU?!”

 

As he watched Shego struggling to get out of the grasp of two of his bigger goons, he grinned again, his scar pulling tightly at his left eye and making it twitch faintly. He clapped the thick rubbery latex of his black gloves together excitedly and watched her twitch her wrists in the way she always did when she wanted a fireball.

 

“You know, Shego… Lately your performance has been very lack-luster. I’ve come to realize something. The closest I’ve come to success in the past few years have been those times you weren’t in on my plans. The Bebe’s captured all of my old rivals quickly and efficiently…” He muttered something more under his breath, his eyes momentarily darkening before returning to their normal beady gleam. He continued on in his nascent rant, letting it roll for his captive audience.

 

“And when I didn’t let you in on my plans for Bueno Nacho, things went swimmingly until you found out. How much do I pay you for such ineffectual work anyways?”

 

Once again Shego’s mouth was working independently of her will, “Three-hundred fourty-seven thousand, two-hundred fifty-three dollars US, minus my FICA contribution last year.”

 

She scowled and cursed a moment later when she realized she’d just blathered out yet more information. “Damn it Drakken; as soon as I get that body powder washed off I’m going to…!”

 

“You’re going to do what? If you’d bothered to listen to my plan this morning you’d know that once the product has been used, its effects are more or less permanent… And you’d also know that I saw you in the warehouse, and I saw you shoot yourself in the face with the truth amplification and extraction beam. So, tell me again Shego,” He leaned in very close to his second in command, crooked teeth glinting in the moody light of the command center she had stormed her way into moments before, “You’re going to do what?”

 

Shego was silent; she didn’t know what she was going to do, so there was no truth for her rebellious mouth to spout off.

 

Drakken, however, showed no signs of his raving diminishing any time soon, so any answer she gave would have been lost on him anyway. Now his beady eyes did watch her keenly for an answer, and the guards tightened their grips on her wrists. “And, tell me again why you’ve routinely failed to stop Kim Possible and that boy she runs around with? I mean, you’re supposed to be this slick stuff mercenary who takes on all comers after all; so how can you fail to stop one cheerleader?”

 

Shego tried to squeeze her mouth shut. She bit her lower lip viciously, trying to hold back the damning truth as she tasted coppery blood. A mumble escaped between her teeth and over her upper lip, “Cas I reffct fer”

 

Drakken snapped his fingers and scowled as one of the guards momentarily released her wrist with just one hand to hold her mouth open.  It was all the opening Shego needed. She kicked out with her left leg and caught that guard just under the ribs, feeling his side give way and hearing a wet crack as he grunted and fell violently away from her, his other hand also releasing her wrist.

 

Using the momentum from the sudden release of her left arm, she swung her weight around and off the ground completely, bringing both feet up into the gut of the other guard, who didn’t have time to release her right arm and protect himself. She felt his hot, fetid breath on her face as the heels of her boots sank home and he fell backwards, releasing her and clutching his midsection as a small amount of bile gurgled from his lips. As he dropped to his knees she brought both elbows down on the back of his neck and grinned a feral grin when his entire body went limp before her.

 

She wheeled on the blue skinned madman and stalked towards him, spitting blood from her black-painted lips and finally wiping them with the back of a green glove. “I said, because unlike you, you ugly little blue twerp, I respect Kimmie. I didn’t see you busting your cerulean ass to help my family out when they got messed with not once, but twice! You and I are supposed to be some kind of Evil Family huh?!”

 

Shego was just about to leap at him and secure her talonned gloves around his throat when she heard the whoosh of several power-poles being snapped into action in the shadows around her. Orbs of roiling blue light simmered at the heavy tip of each, to which she reflexively cocked her own hands. Of course, she’d momentarily forgotten that they were out of commission and so she stood there in a rather fearsome pose for several seconds as the red-suited henchmen advanced on her, all of them smirking dangerously.

 

It was when the first of the plum-pole shaped assault weapons smacked into the palm she’d raised to deflect it that she actually remembered this important fact; because the skin on her palm sizzled and the scent of cooking flesh reached her nose, and each sent of primal warnings deep into her brain that her ego and training couldn’t over-ride.

 

“Shit! That’s hot!” She yanked her hand back and executed a one-handed back flip away from the guards, growling dangerously the whole time. Finally near the main exit, she scowled at the blue madman and his hired goons, seeing in all of their eyes the desire for retribution for years of her snide remarks. “Any more questions doc?”

 

“No… I think that will just about do it Shego… oh, and incidentally… Your fired.” He pulled a blaster from his lab coat pocket, and it was not the benign yellow one she had been toying with earlier that morning. It spat a fairly vicious looking bolt after her, which was only stopped by the closing door she had just backed through. “Well, what are you fools waiting for? After her!”

 

\-----

 

Deep in the mountains of western Honshu, a pair of honey-colored hands carefully unwrapped the crepe’ paper and white ribbon that secured the small box. Smiling softly, she carefully lifted the small, pock-marked white stone and she read the two tags attached to it.

 

_“On the occasion of your birthday, Akematsu Yori, a gift from your friends to ease you along the path your feet travel.”_

 

She smiled pleasantly at the pun, written in kanji of the oldest forms, and then read the other tag, the one that had originally been attached to the soft white pumice stone.

 

_“Dr D’s Miracle Foot Stone. Relieves your deepest aches and pains.”_

 

Yori chuckled lightly and smiled, almond eyes almost glistening with pride and joy at all of her closest friends. All except two of course, who were several thousand miles away and couldn’t attend her birthday celebration. “Hirotaka-san, this must be your doing… Only you and I have been to America to know what one of these foot stones are.”

 

She smiled at the Tokyo native with the infamously coifed hair, who nodded casually in response. “It was recommended to me by number one girlfriend Bonnie.”

 

She smiled, remembering Kim-san and honorable Stoppable-san mentioning the girl he spoke of, although they seemed not as fond of her as Hirotaka-san did.

 

There was a soft clearing of a throat, and Yori turned, smiling on the craggy, yet soft features of Sensei.

 

“Honorable Yori-chan, you have done much to defend our home and indeed my own life during these past years. Please, accept our small gift as a token of the gratitude of every student of Yammanouchi.” His deep voice, like warm silk, served only to bring more moistness to her eyes and she nodded, bowing deeply at the waist and clutching the simple white stone to her chest.

 

“Hai. The dojo does much honor to me in this simple, thoughtful gift. Indeed my feet have been bothering me of late. The high western heels I wore on my last assignment were not very comfortable.” She smiled broadly at the chuckle this brought from her classmates, who remembered the way she had caressed badly swollen feet on her return to the mountain-top school from a surveillance mission in Okayama.

 

“That is not the only gift that we have for you, Yori-sempai,” this time it was Fukushima, the fallen one. As always when speaking to her, his eyes were downcast; a lesson hard-won after his defeat at the hands of the school’s Tai Shing Pek Kwar Master. “Honorable Lunch Lady has prepared a special western style meal in your honor.”

 

Yori chuckled at the moniker that their cook had picked up and relished after the visit from her very dear friend Stoppable-san. “Another gift? Surely this is too much!”

 

The tears that had been threatening at her almond eyes finally began to flow freely as a plate of something that was bright yellow and green in color, with flecks of red peppers, and smelling strongly of Mexican cheese and spices, was brought before her.

 

Similar plates of Chimerito were placed before all of the other assembled students, who unlike she, attempted to attack them with chop-sticks. Bending low and attempting to hide the tears of happiness, and of a small amount of regret, Yori merely picked hers up in both hands and began to eat it in the only way one of these things could be successfully eaten; she attempted to inhale it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Notes: Yori’s surname, Akematsu, is not part of the Kim Possible Cannon. She actually doesn’t have one in the series. It’s an homage to one of my favorite manga artists, Akematsu Ken, who created such great works as Love Hina and Negima! 
> 
> Shego’s eyes being brown will be explained later, so no worries; although you may have a clue if you’ve read my other fic, “Kim Possible: The Darkness Without.”


	4. Do You Want 5 Alarm Sauce with that?

“Ron… could you please go get me a bottle of water? Pretty please?” They were sitting in a dusty office in the back of an insurance broker’s, just as Ron had suggested, to allow Kim hide out for the weekend at least.

 

Ron tried his best to look away. He knew the timber in that voice all too well, and the trembling lower lip that would accompany it. He knew that if he actually was dumb enough to look up from the stack of envelopes he was stuffing, all hope would be lost.  Ron was many things, but stupid on that profound a level, he was not.

 

Now, Ron had known Kim longer than he could really remember. They’d gone to Pre-K together, even if his memory from being five years old was sketchy. Still, over the nearly two decades they’d known each other, he’d managed to build up something of a resistance to Kim’s infamous puppy-dog pout.  He was by no means immune; not even Kim’s parents were totally immune to her most dangerous weapon, but he could usually hold out for a minute or two and hope that backup arrived before he caved.

 

“Pretty please? With sugar and a churro grande on top?” He felt a dainty finger lightly drawing a circle on his shoulder, and his resistance started to waver. Rufus poked his head out of Ron’s backpack and looked to KP at the mention of deep-fried Mexican sweets, and quickly passed out like a limp rag doll.

 

Well Ron just had to find out what had made his little buddy faint dead away like that, so against every instinct of self-preservation he had, he looked up from envelope stuffing to his recent girlfriend.

 

“Holy Mother of Guacamole!” Ron was literally bowled backwards out of his seat at the look that greeted him.

 

If the usual puppy-dog pout could be described as the most lethal weapon in Kim’s arsenal, then this new look, framed by corn-silk colored locks that shimmered in the dim light of the office, was a weapon of mass destruction. Kim’s lower lip was stuck out slightly and was trembling in a manner that suggested… well, it suggested something unholy. It faintly glistened with pink lip-gloss that only heightened its accuracy and efficacy, bringing the trembling even more to the forefront in the dim light. Her emerald eyes, usually so keen and quick moving, were as big as saucers and almost liquid, as it at any moment tears might begin to fall from them if her wish was denied. They were aimed upwards towards him as Kim had leaned forward, allowing a few strands of gold to fall across her face in an attempt to look even more neglected and pathetic.

 

Ron, sitting on his backside on the concrete floor, flung a hand over his eyes in self-defense and practically shouted, “Okay okay, Water! I’ll get it, just stop doing… that!”

 

The hand that wasn’t busy shielding him from the siren’s gaze pointed at her as if she had just were a devil to be cast out.  He felt around for his backpack blindly, still covering his brown eyes, and grabbed a limp mole-rat and a wallet out of it before crawling and stumbling away.

 

“Please and thank you!” Kim said with a tiny giggle and smiled impishly at his retreating form. She sat back in her chair and started folding flyers again. She carefully slipped them into the envelopes before her; even if she wasn’t moving as swiftly as she knew she was capable of, it was just busy work for Ron’s uncle after all.

 

Once Ron was clear of the room and the demon in platinum contained therein, he sighed and collapsed back against a wall, leaning on it for support as if he had just been physically assaulted. He looked at the flaccid rodent in his hand and shook a little. Rufus moaned softly and finally came around, looking up with beady black eyes at his master. “puppy-dog paralysis” He moaned in mole-speak.

 

Ron nodded in agreement to his little partner in crime. When Kim had looked at him, it felt like he’d been physically struck. He just had to get out of that damned room, even though he was supposed to be out here getting something. Suddenly, a little voice in the back of his head whispered to him to go get the water. “Oh yeah, bottled water for her highness!”

 

He smacked his forehead and headed down the hall to the vending machine, wondering how he could get so worked up over a little PDP action, and got the bottle out just like Kim had asked.

 

\-----

 

On the slopes of Mt Yamanouchi, in Honshu, Japan, Yori sat with her feet in the refreshingly cool waters of a spring. Today her tabi1 boots had felt particularly tight and heavy, and she decided it was a perfect time to break in the small gift she had received from her fellow students. She carefully ran the small white pumice stone under the water to remove the dust and drew her slender feet from the water.

 

They were definitely not feminine feet by anyone’s definition, despite their gracile structure. The balls of her feet wore thick calluses on either side where she would balance on the edges of her feet, and more recently, where she had been made to wear western-style heels for a mission. Her heel was equally thickened and rough from walking many miles every day up and down the mountain side.

 

The tops of her feet were no daintier than the soles. Thick and powerful tendons and prominent veins ran towards her toes and displayed how much she used and relied on her lower appendages for combat, and the ways that she could bend and walk on them in an almost super-human manner.

 

She bent her knee up into her lap in a most limber manner and began to slowly rub the rough stone along the inside of the ball of her foot. She told herself that smoothing away the thickened, hard callus would make her feet more sensitive, and thereby increase her balance and agility. This was how she justified the luxurious feeling that she got from the purely selfish act of caring for her well-traveled feet.

 

As the pock-marked stone slowly wore away the hard, almost plastic flesh at the inside edge of her foot, she tried to suppress a small giggle. She had no idea that the American vanity stone would make the soles of her feet, or her finger tips holding it, tingle so. Once she had removed almost a half centimeter of hide from the edge of her foot and big toe, she began to work the stone along the outside of her foot, feeling somewhat refreshed and freed as if the act of removing the calluses was removing a weight from her shoulders also.

 

Thin lips smiled slightly as she thought of all the things she learned on her under-cover missions and in America now that she was a fully fledged Ninja. Things she’d not considered in her isolated life at the dojo were shocking, to say the least. The rampant sexuality that was flung her way on her last assignment in Okayama was surprising. She’d never considered herself to be particularly attractive, and the young men that she knew in her life didn’t seem to see her that way, that was certain.

 

Even honorable Ron-sama2, who was supposed to be a typical American boy full of sex and humor, didn’t seem to realize that she was a woman most of the time when they met on occasion. This was probably why he had chosen Kim possible-san as his partner in the deeper sense of that word. She wore dresses and was not as… muscular… as Yori herself was.

 

Yori sighed gently as she sanded away at the heel of her care-worn foot now, because while Ron-sama did not think of her as more than a friend and compatriot, she knew that she did think of him as so much more. Beyond being the legendary master of Tai Sheng Pek Kwar, he was funny and sweet, and never failed to make her laugh.

 

The tingling in the sole of her foot seemed to be deepening into her actual soul as she dipped one foot into the water, rinsing away the dead skin and shivering at how sensitive the newly thinned flesh was in the crisply chill spring water. She began to wonder, as she took the other foot into her lap, why she did not simply tell Stoppable-sama of her feelings when they had saved Sensei from that bizarre gorilla-woman, before he had fallen prey to Possible-san.

 

As she ground away a bit more firmly at the instep of her right foot, she rolled that phrase around in her mind. Her native dialect didn’t have that specific phrase in it, but the westerners had seemed to capture what Kim-san did to Ron quite aptly in English; she had captured his heart like a beast, right out from under the ninja.

 

Her red hair and green eyes were so exotic, like those of a mythical dragon; how could her sweet and clownish Ron-sama hope to escape them for long? Yori began to sand away at her foot’s heel and sole with the white stone, relishing the tingle there as it seemed again to run up her leg and deeper into body and mind. She began to wonder if following the dragon-woman was the best thing for the monkey master. She seemed to place him in situations even a servant of Yamanouchi would think twice about taking up.

 

She tried to push away that thought. She and sensei agreed that Ron-sama and Kim Possible-san must be fated to be together, as they had been for so many long years already. Yori had only known Ron for three years, and in that time had actually only spent perhaps three weeks in the young-man’s company.

 

No. It was not proper to think ill of the dragon-woman; yes even her fierce sprit seemed that of the Dragon, although Ron-sama had once called it her ‘essential kimness.’ She had won Stoppable-sama fairly and they should be commended for their happiness together. Still, she could not totally push away the pang of regret that came to her this day as she removed the last of the thickened rough skin from the bottom of her foot. She dipped it into the chill water with its mate, and looked down at them both.

 

The feet of a Ninja, and a matched pair, they belonged together. That thought stayed with her as she pulled her tabi back on and took her magical little stone, beginning the climb back up the mountain to the Dojo.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Tabi: can describe either the two-toed socks worn with Geta (Japanese wooden sandals), or the two-toed, rubber soled boots worn by Ninja.  
> 2\. Japanese Name Suffix. –sama confers a high degree of respect. Often used by spouses as well to refer to one another. –san is a familiar suffix used to address most friends and peers. Others include –kun generally used as a ‘cute’ reference towards younger children, -sempai used to refer to a superior, usually in school or work, -kohai the opposite of sempai and fairly demeaning, -sensei literally master of an art or teacher. The lack of any suffix used to confer a high degree of comfort and intimacy with someone, used between very close friends and within a family. Lately it is more common as Japanese youth become more westernized and drop traditional suffixes.


	5. “Truthiness in Advertising”

Shego looked at herself irritably in the slightly grimy mirror of the discount lair she’d rented, and sighed. She’d learned an important lesson yesterday afternoon. Truth, like beauty, was in the eye of the beholder.

 

She’d been absolutely convinced by her encounter with the truthiness ray that Drakken was not an evil genius. That damned yellow beam had her convinced of the simple fact that he couldn’t be devious or treacherous beyond a certain point. It turned out that Dr. Drew Theodore P. “Drakken” Lipsky actually was quite the evil madman when he put his mind to it.

 

Her mind had one truth… Reality had the other. Well, no more truthiness ray for her. Back to trusting no one. Not even herself, it seemed.

 

She went to tug off her left glove so she could start washing up, and hissed in pain. The green leather seared and bit at her senses the instant she moved it. “Oh fuck me… well, quick, like a bandaid!”

 

Shego grabbed the short cuff of jade leather, took a deep breath, and yanked. Then she did something she’d not done since she was eight years old and had broken her knee while chasing her brothers. She howled in excruciating pain.

 

When the glove came away, it left behind a palm that was ragged and had strips of skin hanging from it. It wasn’t totally gruesome; there was still skin on her palm, but it was red and inflamed, and slick where the upper layer had blistered and sloughed off. There were a few places where the skin was broken and bleeding slightly as well. Apparently the pain she had felt was that upper most layer of dead skin sticking to the inside of her leather glove and then tugging at the wounded flesh beneath as it was removed.

 

She hissed at the pain in defiance. It was a simple burn from grabbing that henchman’s power-pole. It should long since have healed. Well, in fact she never should have been burned in the first place, but that was beside the point… or was it? She began to scrub with her good hand at the mirror and stared into it, a sickening premonition flooding over her as she did so. Was her plasma fire and healing ability the only thing she was going to lose?

 

“Thank God… I’m still a sexy shade of green.”

 

She sighed with relief at the one small favor and turned, using her good hand to operate the controls of the shower and then peeling out of her catsuit. Getting the uniform off felt good; she'd been wearing it the better part of two days now and it was starting to get a little ripe in there. She tossed it away from her body like the filthy thing it was and then repeated the process with her bra and panties.

 

She realized she’d have to run around naked until she washed them again, as she had no spares… but at least this rent-a-lair had no windows, so that shouldn’t be a problem.

 

Then she found a little thing that let her know that there was a God, and that She must be at least somewhat benevolent. In the back of a small linen closet was a loofah. A quick sniff assured her that it wasn’t a used one, and then she gleefully took it with her back to the still running shower.

 

Climbing into the shower, she hissed again as water hit her raw, inflamed left hand and she cursed herself for not being thoughtful enough to wrap it in something first. Well, why would she think to? She hadn’t been injured like this in a long time.

 

Once the initial shock of pain subsided, and she assured herself she wouldn’t be stupid enough to actually get soap on the raw blistered skin, she began to caress her muscular body with the cheap bar of hotel soap the maintenance crew always left in the rental hideouts. She tried her damndest to get the grime and sweat off her body, and for this the harsh little natural cleansing tool was an excellent find.

 

A few pleasured groans echoed around the shower enclosure as she scrubbed away the accumulated dirt of escape and adrenaline. She sighed softly, almost relaxing as the water aided in her cleansing. Finally she managed to also shampoo her hair with the small travel shampoo that had accompanied the hotel soap. This was a task, as she had quite a lot of thick wavy hair, and she was trying to clean it one handed.

 

Still, she got the task accomplished at least satisfactorily, and just in time too as she felt the water flow growing cool, the inadequate hot water tank to her pay-by-the-day lair being exhausted by her indulgent shower. She sighed and stepped free of the shower stall, grabbing a small towel, which was inadequate in more ways than one. She gave up after a moment of trying to wrap it around either her hair or her body. It was too small to effectively cover and hold either, and met the definition of ‘towel’ only in that it was a piece of cloth intended for drying, and was slightly larger than a washcloth.

 

Still she began using it to wring most of the moisture from her body, and wincing in pain as she had to, in turn, wring it out in the sink occasionally using both her good and injured hands.

 

It was when she got to about mid-thigh in her drying that she recognized something was amiss. This was as far as she had been able to reach, in the small shower stall, with the loofah; at least without hanging her butt entirely out of the shower to bend over anyway, so this was the first place the small marks and streaks appeared on her flesh. They were very faint marks, but because of the difference in coloration, they were still clear to her keen eyes.

 

Testing her theory, she began scratching away at her skin with a green painted thumbnail. She was shocked when the obvious pea colored skin was scraped away, and revealed beneath it a faint peach tone. Her loofah had started this process, and she leaned back dejectedly against the sink as she saw that what she had hoped before getting into the shower was a false hope. Apparently the ‘benevolent’ God who had gifted her with the scrubbing tool was a real smart-assed bitch today.

 

Shego flung her middle finger towards the low ceiling of the rent-a-lair in defiance of the deity and groaned, stumbling her way towards the futon in one corner of the lair and flopping dejectedly onto it.

 

\-----

 

Drakken was grinning, which made a thick black scar pucker around his left eye.

 

It didn’t matter. Each of his Drak-co hygiene products seemed to work perfectly so far. Well, except for the Shampoo… but that was something he could look into later. The bath powder Shego had so eagerly rubbed into her green hide had completely dissipated her plasma. It was a shame she wasn’t going to be around for him to examine the further effect of course, since the products took a while to take full effect; but it was better that she was out of the way. She always, he now realized, seemed to hinder his plans in the long run.

 

And _respecting_ that damned cheerleader!? Yes. She was slipping in her old age. That must be it! That was why her loose tongue had allowed Possible to always find and defeat his schemes. She was getting careless the older she got. She must be going into some green-skinned menopause or something, the psycho. The fact that she was only twenty-six was unimportant and trivial.  Yes, much better that she was now powerless and out of his hair.

 

He eyed his next great product, the body-wash. Like each of the hygiene products, it had its own, special, unique effect on the person using it. This bubble-gum scented body wash would make the user physically weak and if used enough times, it would make them collapse completely. It was the lynchpin of his plan, to incapacitate the armies of the world so they could not stop him.

 

Shego, of course, had persisted in pointing out that no self-respecting Marine was going to use bubble-gum scented body wash in a magenta bottle… But then again, she and all of her irksome meddling were gone now, weren’t they?

 

Drakken paused to check his bank accounts quickly, and found that everything was in order… Despite the façade he had played to Shego over the past few months… a farce about being financially tapped out after the BN debacle, he was actually very well off. A few years ago he had gotten in on the ground floor of a growth industry: rental villainy.

 

It was such a mind-numbingly simple concept that he had to wonder why he hadn’t come up with it himself. The vast majority of your common everyday criminal types spent at least half their time in prison or in hospital. With that in mind, why should they buy things like lairs, death-rays, henchmen, and cleaning supplies? No, the real money was to be had in the time-share market!

 

Rent out retail space, such as it was, to a villain, and once he was in jail, in hospital, or his grave, turn around and rent it to the next guy! It was shear genius! Jack Hench had really brought the market into its own, but Drakken had made a few well timed investments in other companies that successfully operated in niches such as time-share lairs, and moat-monster training. This was how he afforded the mass-production needed to get the new generation of Drak-co hygene products out onto the market.

 

Once he’d sent off an email prospectus to one of the companies he was eyeing to contract body-wash production to, he sat back and steepled his fingers. Yes… things were going very, very well here. His only concern now was working the bugs out of the mind-control shampoo. They primary ingredient should have rendered Kim Possible susceptible to any command. And clearly printed on the back of the bottle was a command. Well, not incredibly clearly, it would need the special state of mind the shampoo was supposed to induce to interpret it, but it was there.

 

So, why had she not shown up willingly at his front door within hours of using the shampoo? “Mrrrrph... Shego! Bring me my-! Oh, that’s right… you’re not here anymore are you?” Drakken frowned, and then thumbed a button on his console. “Yes… Jenkins, is it?”

 

“Yes sir!”

 

“Good good man, Bring me some coco-moo please… I need to think…”

 

“I’m sorry; some what, sir?”

 

\-----

 

Kim was a little bit shocked to find Monique waiting in her bedroom after Ron dropped her off. Monique was a little shocked to see Kim dressed up like Camille Leon fresh from the plastic surgeon. Anne Possible, who’d arranged this meeting, wasn’t particularly shocked at all when she brought up two glasses of milk and a plate of cookies.

 

Kim eyed her mother with thinly disguised contempt… the kind of contempt only a teenager could show to a parent when they’d been set up. She also eyed the cookies and milk petulantly. “Mom… We’re not twelve!”

 

“Speak for yourself GF. I _wish_ I could have fresh cookies on beck and call!” She smiled eagerly to Mrs. Dr P, who chuckled and set the plate down before strategically retreating.

 

Kim eyed the closing door to her room’s more traditional entrance closing archly, and then also closed the ‘hatch’ that led downstairs from her floor. Finally, when she seemed satisfied that her gal pal was the only person who was going to see this; she took off her large glasses and then unwrapped the shawl from around her hair, which cascaded, as Ron had pointed out this morning, over her shoulders.

 

Monique smirked and eyed her, pursing her lower lip slightly in contemplation. Then she slowly started to chuckle and stood up, walking around Kim, who looked stricken by the examination. “Wade’s right, you totally freaked over a lil nothing, girl.”

 

“Mo,” She whined as she was examined, “This is so ferociously gross! I look like a… like a…”

 

“Cheerleader? Starlet? Covergirl? Heiress? Stop me if I’m getting warm here girlfriend…” Monique chuckled, and suddenly she was uncomfortably close to Kim; and looking, it seemed, directly into her eyes. “Damn, you’ve got to get me some of that shampoo! Even got your brows good! I wouldn’t know you were a ginger if I didn’t already know!”

 

“A wha-?” Kim blinked, a little perplexed that her eyebrows were being questioned and that she was being compared to a cooking spice.

 

“You know… A ginger, a carrot top, a firebrand, a matchstick, a copper-top, an irish lass, a-,”

 

“Okay! I got it, thanks for the exposition!” Kim huffed and sat down on her bed. She kicked her shoes off and sighed, looking at her hands to avoid Monique’s continued curiosity.

 

“Yeah… it got me good alright… the drapes even match the carpet.” She mumbled against her neck as she looked down, trying not to recall the violation of her personal space and shower time.

 

Monique blinked, having not quite heard her. Then she put together what was probably said and winced, “Ouch… Okay, maybe I don’t want a bottle of that stuff… Coffee and Cream is fine as a look, but I think I’ll leave the yard work to something I can trust not to brain wash me.”

 

Kim looked up and made a sour face at her friend, but couldn’t hold it for very long in the face of such bald-faced vanity. She laughed and clapped her hands to her face, “Gawd Monique! You’re horrible! Come here and have a cookie for that! If I have to have a sharp-tongue friend, at least she can be fat!”

 

Monique made a hurt and offended face, but she took the chocolate-chip cookie anyway and munched it thoughtfully. “So, this stuff didn’t actually brainwash you, did it? I mean Ron didn’t sneak you away to some deserted hotel room and make you obey his every twisted wish?”

 

“Oh yeah… he made me dress up in a lil Bueno Nacho waitress outfit and listen to his every perverted order.” Kim smirked and bapped Monique with a pillow, “Have another cookie for that! It was just sick and wrong!”

 

Monique did just that, despite still having the first in her hand. “Okay, yeah, but your response was just sicker and more wrong, girl-friend… I’m going to have to pull a double all-nighter with Felix and his math equations to get _that one_ out of my head.”

 

“Okay, yeah, that was a lil wrongsick, wasn’t it?” Kim laughed and sat the pillow down. She looked up, a mock look of horror crossing through her emerald eyes, “Oh god, I’m starting to talk like Ron! This stuff is leaching into my brain! Help!”

 

Monique laughed loudly and munched on both of the cookies she had been ‘ordered’ to take. After a few moments of munching she had them both down and slapped Kim with a pillow to get her attention, still giggling herself. “We got school in tomorrow, Girl… what are you going to do about your new ‘look’?”

 

She sighed softly, having been wrestling with this. “That’s the weird thing… I already tried to do something about it. I got a bottle of the best hair color I could afford and followed all the instructions. Mo, it ran off my head like water!”

 

“Hmmm… what was it? Clairoless? Natural Confessions? Avondale?” Monique took a few strands of Kim’s platinum locks in her fingers and examined them root to tip for evidence they had been dyed.

 

“Mayweather Salon.” Kim winced slightly; the stuff had cost her all of her mad-money, almost twenty dollars, and had come right out as though it was just a kool-aide dye job.

 

Monique whistled softly and nodded. It’s what she would have chosen in such a situation, and that was saying something. “And it didn’t even take? That stuff is the strongest you can get over the counter; they even use it at my hair place.”

 

“I’ve got the newly crimson towel to prove it… Or is that ‘ginger’?” Kim chuckled a bit, but drew her flaxen tresses from Monique’s fingers in a display of discomfort.

 

“Okay… still got the ‘sick day’ option you know, you haven’t missed a day in what, three years?”

 

“No, remember I had to miss Christmas week cause of the cracked ribs?” Both winced and nodded, remembering how Kim had busted herself up pretty hard chasing a little German man across the tundra.

 

“Okay, but still, I’m sure no one is going to miss you for one or two days till we can get this straightened out.” Monique sat back and looked over her best friend’s predicament and tried to think of what more could be done.

 

“I’m not missing school cause of a stupid hairdo… I’ll wear a hat or something!”

 

“Yeah, that’s really going to fly with Barkin. And what about she-thang?” Monique shot down the idea with two of its main detractors.

 

“Bonnie? Oh cripes! I forgot about her!” Kim moaned and thrust her face into her hands, collapsing backwards onto her bed in a heap. There was no way the queen bee of Middleton High was going to let this one slide past. “Just shoot me now! Then have another cookie.”

 

Monique put her fingers to Kim’s temple, and made a bang sound; and then did indeed reach for a third chocolate-chip cookie.


	6. “Curses... Foiled again”

 

Kim sighed heavily and shook her head. She had indeed decided to skip one day of school. She’d woken up that morning, taken one look in the mirror, and the prospect of trying to stare down Bonnie over her new ‘look’ just overwhelmed her. Her mom had come in to find her fighting back the tears in front of her mirror, and just shook her head and called the school.

 

She couldn’t believe herself. Reduced to tears just at the thought of going to school. Monique had tried to dye her hair one last time last night before she left… and had succeeded only in ruining another bath towel with red hair dye that just ran off her head like water. She’d suggested a whole new look, maybe try to work with the platinum, but Kim had politely declined.

 

She did have one thing she could use, though. And when her new little wrist kimmunicator beeped, she figured she'd have to use it.

 

She tried to remember which button activated the call on this new com, which had just arrived in the mail this morning. “What’s the sitch Wade? _Please_ tell me you figured out how to change my hair back.”

 

“Sorry Kim… no such news yet… but Shego was just spotted breaking in to a bank in Upperton. Feel up to a little smash and grab action?”

 

“Sure… it’s got to beat staying in the house all day waiting for my hair to change back… ALL my hair Wade… ALL OF IT!”

 

“Whoa… calm down Kim.  Just chill out. Aside from that being way too much info… I’m working on it Kim… trust me.” Wade sighed from the little screen and shook his head. He couldn’t figure out why Kim was so tweaked about her hair.

 

“Yeah. Sorry Wade… Please. Just do everything you can, kay? This is ferociously awkwierd.”

 

“Of course Kim.”

 

“So. Which bank in Upperton?” Kim got Wade’s directions and fired up the Sloth.

 

\-----

 

Kim watched Shego closely from the skylight of the Upperton Mall. The bank she was attacking was located directly below, in the Mall’s main concourse. People had already fled the Mall for the most part, so she had a fairly unfettered view of the green merc looting the safe.

 

Something wasn’t quite right here. Shego wasn’t moving right. It wasn’t anything Kim could put her finger on, but her instincts told her it was wrong. As she looked closer, another thing caught Kim’s eye. Shego seemed a little more green than usual. What the heck was going on with the woman? Normally she was just the green side of pale, today she seemed down right Kermit.

 

She unhinged the skylight and attached her grapple to it. Before moving any further, she checked the recent addition to her mission gear. Her flaxen hair was bound up in a tight bun behind her head, and her head itself was capped by a flat black bandanna, which hid virtually all of the bound hair. Assured that her ‘condition’ was well masked, Kim carefully lowered herself to the floor of the mall thirty feet below.

 

Dropping nearly silently to the floor, and feeling thankful that Shego was distracted by shoveling money into her gunny sack, Kim retracted her grapple and slipped it onto its holder on her belt. She darted quickly around behind a column and again paused to examine Shego. “Yup… definitely too green. I wonder if this is a copy cat?”

 

There was a sudden explosive rattle. A sub machine gun being fired into the air. It was quickly followed by plaster and shell casings clattering against the tile floor of the Mall’s promenade. “I know you’re there Princess… come on out!”

 

Kim did as she was asked, stepping cautiously out from behind the column. This obviously wasn’t shego. The green woman didn’t use or need guns. “All right… who are you?! And how did you know I was here?”

 

“Oh come on pumpkin. You’re sneaky… but you’re not ninja sneaky.”

 

“And you’re not Shego. She doesn’t use guns, and she could certainly hit bigger targets than a mall bank kiosk… so drop the act.”

 

_‘shit’_ Shego cursed inwardly. Her arch nemesis was right. She was leaving way too many clues. But she’d needed something to intimidate the fools who wouldn’t leave after she announced her presence a few minutes ago. “Oh, listen to you, Miss Perfect. Mean to tell me you’re not Kimmie just cause you’re wearing a do-wrag and not your pretty princess whit and blue pj.’s?”

 

Kim snorted to cover the shock at keen observation by whoever this was. “My look is none of your concern… don’t you think you ought to give up before the real Sheshona decides to come by and bust you for copying her act?”

 

“What-?! How the hell did you find out my real name, kitten?!” Shego spat and fixed the machine gun on Kim. Her eyes were wide with a mixture of shock and anger and her gun hand actually trembled slightly.

 

Kim blinked. It couldn’t be… It couldn’t be the real Shego.

 

Kim had realized, as she watched the gun-toting woman, that even her hair was just a little off. If the woman’s skin was a little to green, her hair was a little too black. But this woman had just reacted to Shego’s real name, a secret Kim had been withholding as an emergency taunt against the real deal.

 

It had taken almost four years and numerous blind leads before she finally learned the mercenary’s true name. She hadn’t wanted to waste it on a copy cat, it was one of those lines to toss off in the heat of battle, to throw the verdant villainess off her game. Apparently she hadn’t wasted the line?

 

“Just drop the gun Shego.”

 

Much to Kim’s surprise, Shego dropped the p-90 on the ground with a loud clatter.

 

She looked at her empty hands because she had also dropped the sack full of loot. After a moment of trepidation she asked the air, “Okay… why the hell did I just do that?”

 

She bent over to pick up both items and scowled. Then she started stalking towards her foe and blinked, keen eyes… hidden behind contacts, noting just why Kim’s look had changed. She stopped in surprise.

 

Kim was equally surprised. “Give it up Shego. I don’t know why you’re doing this, but put the gun down and give up.”

 

Again the expensive p-90 dropped to the floor. Again Shego cursed, and dropped the money sack, this time going so far as to put her hands over her head. “What the fuck am I doing? I know I dig blondes and all… but what the hell?!”

 

Kim blinked in shock, and a hand unconsciously went to the back of her head, and the tight knot of blonde hair hidden beneath black cotton. “How did you…?”

 

“Oh please kitten. You’re standing not twenty feet away; and you’re not exactly the mistress of a thousand faces with that cheap do-wrag. Though I got to admit… it’s workin’ well with the new uniform.” Shego smirked, but for some reason, the commands she was sending to her arms to lower themselves and pick up the gun weren’t being obeyed.

 

“Fine fine… So you… why do you look six shades of gherkin? Tell me that huh?”

 

“I lost my powers thanks to Drakken.” Shego blinked. “WHAT THE FUCK?! I thought that truthiness ray wore off!”

 

“The truthiness… Shego, tell me what the heck is going on.” Kim scowled and started closing the distance to her foe, seeing she didn’t seem to be moving out of her ‘I give up’ pose.

 

Shego tried to bite her lip, but unlike with the effects of the yellow ray a few days ago, this time she couldn’t even do that much. “Drakken slipped me some new body powder. It took my plasma, then it took my green skin. Now my hair and eyes are turning brown. I needed money, but I didn’t have any firepower of my own, and I knew that no one was going to be afraid of some woman dressed as Shego who wasn’t green and fire breathing. So I bought the best gun I could find and came in here, after painting my face and neck with some old foundation I had laying around.”

 

She spat when she finished her diatribe and scowled, still unable to move out of her hands-in-the-air posture. “And why the fuck am I just standing here like an idiot telling you all this?!”

 

Kim, unlike Shego, wasn’t compelled to answer… but she was also wondering that. She shook her head. “Shut up Shego, I’m trying to think here.”

 

The malachite mercenary had been about to say something further in her tirade, but she snorted and puffed her cheeks when her mouth suddenly refused to open.

 

Kim, failing to notice the criminal’s frustration, was scratching at the tight bun her hair was done up in. Finally, she remembered the night before; _‘have another cookie for that.’ ‘hand me that bottle, no the one on the top shelf!’  ‘just go home Monique’_

Monique had done those things when Kim had told her… “Lather… Rinse… Obey… The shampoo!”

 

She looked up, and blinked, seeing Shego’s expression. “What?”

 

Shego puffed her cheeks again and snorted. She continued to stand there, her arms getting sore now at being held up. She rolled her eyes irritably and tapped one booted foot on the tile.

 

“Shego, what is it? Speak up already!”

 

“Damn it Princess! I think Drakken screwed us both. Cept his damned shampoo backfired.” Shego finally spat as she was now allowed to at least talk again.

 

“You mean…?” Kim blinked, the full impact of what was going on only just starting to really register. “Shego, put your arms down.”

 

She did just that, and shook her hands and arms furiously to get the blood flowing in them.

 

“Hop on one foot.”

 

“What the hell?!” Shego began to bob up and down on her left foot and growled irritably at Kim. “This shit ain’t funny cheer-leader!”

 

Kim was smirking though… this was all just too good to be true. “Tell me your full name and where you grew up.”

 

“Sheshona Elsbeth Go. I grew up on my family’s estate in Go city’s West Easterton Heights suburb.” Shego growled and bared her teeth at Kim, still bobbing up and down. “I swear, when I get my hands on your ass I’m going to fuck you up so hard for this shit!”

 

“So you’re rich? Why are you a villain then?”

 

Shego didn’t answer… which surprised them both. Then it clicked in both their minds at the same moment. This wasn’t the truthiness ray; so Shego didn’t just blurt out the truth. She had to be ordered to say or do something.

 

Okay then… Kim shook her head, the fun factor wearing off. This wasn’t very enjoyable all of the sudden. There was no challenge if she could just order Shego to give up. Fighting the gree woman was half the thrill since Drakken really wasn’t much of a threat after all.

 

Kim looked upm considering that revelation. Ooops! Shego was still obeying her last set of commands. “Oh, sorry! Stop hopping now.”

 

“Thanks, bitch!” Shego stopped bouncing up and down, and shook and kicked her now very tired left leg.

 

“Darn it Shego, stop cursing at me!” Kim shorted and unpinned her hair, scratching furiously at it as it fell free beneath the bandana. She was trying to think and the foul language wasn’t helping her to concentrate.

 

“That’s some freaky hair there kitten...  How did your darned head get that way?” Shego blinked and scowled, then she tried to speak again, slowly and deliberately. “Poop. Darn. Crud! Consarnit! Rats! No, nothing!? Darn it Princess! What have you done to me! Flub me! Let me curse!”

 

Kim looked up. Suddenly what she had wrought sank in and she started chuckling. The chuckles quickly degenerated into full blown laughter as she clapped her hands over her mouth. This was just too rich!

 

“Shit! I can curse and you can’t… now there’s irony! Oh! I just cussed! Ooh, this is fun! Hell! Damn, Fuck!” Kim was laughing loudly, relishing the reversal, but Shego obviously wasn’t sharing in her amusement.

 

“Darn it Kimmie! That’s no fair! Stop rubbing it in, that stuff isn’t funny! Gah! I sould like a freaking Disney movie!” Shego was livid and stamped her foot petulantly. She clenched her fists, desperately wishing for just one flicker of green fire to smite her mouthy little nemesis with.

 

Kim laughed softly and shook her head. Finally she walked over and patted Shego on the shoulder. “That’ll do Sheshona... that’ll do. Put the money back and I’ll take you home so Wade can scan you.”

 

Shego scowled as her body compelled her to pick up the sack of money and drag it back into the safe.

 

Meanwhile, Kim stepped outside of the bank kiosk to wait, and ran smack in to Ron. She blinked. “Aren’t you supposed to have class?”

 

“Lunch break, Wade called me and told me what was going on… oh hey, cool cover!” He started reaching for the black bandana that tried to hide Kim’s platinum locks.

 

“Hey, no touchie my Kimmie!” came the call from behind them as Shego came out of the bank, sans money and gun.

 

“Oh, Ron, Shego’s coming with us… my new wrist kimmunicator can’t scan her; so we need to go get the old one and have Wade look her over.”

 

Ron blinked in confusion. Was Shego greener than usual? “Right… and she just agreed to this?”

 

“Let’s just say… she’s compelled for her own reasons.” Kim looked over her shoulder, not sure yet she wanted to let Wade and Ron know about what was going on with either of them.

 

Which was odd:  She could just as easily have let the cops pick Shego up and then gone and scanned her in lock-down, from which she probably couldn’t escape from without her powers. The Shampoo must have other, undiscovered effects if she was making choices like this.  Oh well, may as well go with it.

 

\----- ----- ----- ----- -----

 


	7. Sit, Stay

Fukushima tried to cover his yelp as his arm was bent viciously back into a submission hold common to ninjitsu. Sparring at the school was never child’s play, but Yori-sempai seemed uncharacteristically aggressive today. Fukushima worked his way out of the hold, still, and darted away; working his arm to make sure it still functioned.

 

He eyed his senior and studied her stance. He noted that her posturing was tense. Not the normal fluidity that the favored daughter of the school typically moved with. He made sure to use that to his advantage, even if speaking during sparring was forbidden. He slowly circled closer again, and counted the striking points on her body that her stiffness left exposed.

 

He attempted to strike her chest just above the heart, simulating a kill-strike, but Yori’s hands seemed like lightning, and he found his wrist seized painfully yet again. This time he couldn’t suppress the sharp intake of pained breath.

 

Yori spun his arm and moved behind him, bending the wrist again behind his ear.

 

Fukushima blinked as Yori, of all people, spoke during sparring. Barely above a whisper though it was, if that even.

 

“Yield, fallen one.”

 

He again broke free of the hold and shook his arm again, feeling the weakness from the fifth time she had used the same technique on him. His eyes narrowed at her. She was one of the very few at the dojo who never called him that, publicly or otherwise. It was why he typically faced her in combat practice whenever she was not on a mission.

 

“What?” he whispered, trying not to let the sound of deep personal betrayal slip into his own voice.

 

“I have remained silent long enough. It was a supreme dishonor to allow you to return to the dojo after your treachery against the Tai Sheng Pek Kwar master and the theft of the Lotus blade. Yield and admit your defeat now, and leave the school.”

 

The chocolate eyes of Yori-sempai seemed to have turned nearly to black, and were as hard as coal stones as she stared at him. Fukushima was dumbstruck by her quiet, but intense declaration. She had never said anything like this to him, never given any indication this was how she felt. He opened his mouth to respond, not concerned now with the prohibition against speaking during sparring. “It is not…”

 

This time Yori seemed to hold nothing back. The side of her fist landed upside Fukushima’s head, stunning him with both a force and quickness he had not expected, even if he wasn’t already off balance from her words and tone. It was quickly followed by a mantis-like strike delivered by the tips of her fingers between the third and forth rib on the left side of his chest.

 

Fukushima made an unholy noise as he gasped for breath and pounded with his own fist on his chest. His heart’s rhythm returned to normal after a moment and he looked at the elder ninja totally aghast. Her strike had been less than an inch higher than a fatal strike to the nerve cluster deep beneath his pectoral muscle. As it was, the blow had still sent his heart fluttering in sudden over-load of nerve impulses.

 

Several other pairs of sparing students had stopped and looked as well. Some had caught sight of the blow as it landed, others had their attention grabbed by the fish-like gasping of Fukushima.

 

Yori scowled, and raised her hand, fingers pinched together to deliver another such strike when he seemed about to speak his treacherous words yet again. She had held her tongue long enough. Sensei had not heeded her cautions those months ago about this dog, and she had held her tongue out of respect for his decision. No more. “Yield!”

 

“Yori!” The voice was not a true shout. It did not need to be. It echoed like a thunder clap across the smooth stone of the training yard. For a voice that was typically soft and flowing as silk, to hear a harsh command come forth stunned all, including Yori and Fukushima.

 

Yori, her hand held still in the air, said something else that any who knew the favored daughter of the school would never have believed. She openly refuted Sensei’s decision. “He is a foul thing. He insults us with his presence, Sensei. I shall dissuade him or dispatch him. His continued presence will not dishonor Ron-sama.”

 

Yori moved to strike. Somehow, Sensei was suddenly next to her, and his wizened hand gripped her wrist like iron. “Stoppable-san is not dishonored by anything other than what you do here. Your behavior is most alarming Yori-chan. Please, come with me.”

 

It was not a request. However when Sensei released her wrist, she flipped away from him, fire burning in her nearly black eyes. “You’ve made a mistake allowing this baka bishunfu to return and repeat his disgraceful conduct. I will not be coddled in to believing it is otherwise. He, who would sell his skills to the highest bidder without heed to the consequences; and you, who would allow him to return despite his transgressions.”

 

She disappeared out the gate of the compound, and could be seen running down the long rope bridge that connected Yamanouchi to the outside world. Several students, clad in the black of graduates, moved to follow, but were stilled by a single flick of Sensei’s hand. “Let her go. Fukushima. Join me, please.”

 

Sensei was disturbed by the outburst. He had seen, in the last few days, a growing streak of rash and impulsive behavior in his best student; but he was shocked how it had descended on her in such a short time. Perhaps it was best if she left for a time to free herself of the impulsiveness, which seemed centered on the chosen one.

 

Now his concern was Fukushima-san. Yori’s outburst would only serve to harden the other students’ resolve against him. Perhaps it would be best if he too was absent for some time. Without Yori-san’s formerly cool head to prevail upon them; he might very well not be safe, at least spiritually, within the walls of the school.

 

\-----

 

Shego was not a happy camper. And camped out she was, in the guest room of the Possibles, for the second time in six months. Also for the second time in six months, she was not herself. First it had been that damned attitudinator of Electronique’s forcing her to be ‘Miss Shelly Go.’ Now it was Drakken’s bath powder stripping her of her powers and her trademark color, and forcing her to bow to the whims of a certain cheerleader.

 

“Poop!” She practically screamed out. But that four letter word simply didn’t bear the weight and impact of the one she’d told her mouth to actually use.  Sighing heavily, and scrubbing her still wet hair with a towel and a brush, she glared at herself in the mirror. The woman looking back at her was neither Shego, nor was she ‘Shelly Go.’ She was Sheshona.

 

More precisely, she was a grown up version of Sheshona, who had last been seen over a decade ago, right before a hunk of rainbow colored sky had fallen on her brother’s tree house and turned her into a green-skinned super-human. The cheap black theater hair dye and green foundation makeup had been washed away in the shower, along with the last traces of her own beautiful malachite skin tone. She now had flowing brunette tresses to nearly her waist and a slightly olive, but decidedly normal, skin tone.

 

Worst of all, her favorite physical trait, was absent. Her dragon-green eyes had faded out to a chocolate brown, and now that her contact lenses were taken out for the night, she could barely make out who was looking back at her from the mirror. She hadn’t needed glasses since the day after the comet fell on her head; And now she was nearly as blind as she had been when she was fourteen. At least optical technology had advanced enough that she no longer needed coke bottle lenses. The green contacts had done well enough for her.

 

“Stupid cruddy eyes! Stupid freaking body wash! STUPID POOPY MIND CONTROL SHAMPOO!” She flung the hair brush away from her still tangled locks in frustration and fell back onto the guest bed. She continued to grumble and mutter as she ran her fingers shakily through wet tangled hair. “Gah… I can’t even work up a good screaming rant. Look at what I’ve been reduced to already… of all of the freaking…”

 

Perhaps the worst of all events over the past three days was the fact that Possible had somehow acquired a rudimentary form of mind control, and she was currently under orders not to use her favorite words. She’d even tried sweating in other languages. “Baka” just wasn’t as rewarding as some other Japanese words. The same was true of “toro” in spanish and a few other languages she had command of.

 

There was a knock at the door, and Sheshona sighed heavily. She stood, tightened the towel around her damp frame and crossed the small room to the door, opening it. “What?!”

 

Kim stood, looking up a little dumb founded at Shego. The fighter had had all afternoon to adjust to seeing Kim as a platinum blonde, but this was the first time Kim had seen her in her ‘natural’ state. And she was seeing quite a lot of it, given the fact that the side-kick was currently wrapped in a towel that left little of her muscular body to the imagination. She stared a bit longer than was polite, because, well, she’d never seen a woman as perfectly toned as Shego was. While her muscles were clearly sculpted and visible, they weren’t carved out on her body or vein-ridden; just a seemingly flawless balance of sculpted muscle and feminine curve.

 

She’d seen Shego in revealing garments before, but it seemed somehow different now that the woman had a natural skin tone to her. It was as though she’d gone from being a comic-book super villain to being a flesh and blood woman. It stirred more than a little impressed admiration in Kim, and it took a moment to force that aside and remind herself why she’d come knocking in the first place.

 

Finally she collected her thoughts and brought her eyes to Shego’s, which were also haungtingly different, no longer the same jade as her own, but more like Ron’s in their soft brown color. Soft and inviting despite the keen edge they still held. “Shego, hold it down, it’s after eleven and people are trying to sleep.”

 

“Shego’s dead.” It was a weak and defeated whisper, and even though the command to ‘hold it down’ was firmly in place, the tone was more internal and reluctant than forced. Kim watched as Shego’s eyes cast downwards and lost a lot of their inner heat.

 

It was not the reaction Kim had been expecting. She’d  been prepared for a tirade about how only losers go to bed so early, or how Shego would make all the noise she wanted, or some other such rebuke.

 

“What? Shego, you’re not making sense.” Kim frowned, ignoring the fact that Shego was on display, and the way her posture said one thing and her voice said another. Her body was still held rigidly erect and ready for fight or flight, but Kim could see the reluctant defeat in the woman’s altered eyes. “You’re not dead. You’re standing here, dripping on my mom’s hard wood floor, talking to me.”

 

“No, Shego is dead. It’s just Sheshona now.” The formerly verdant woman looked away and bit her lip, moving to close the door on Kim so she wouldn’t have to face her formerly crimson nemesis. “Look, I’ll keep it down. You can take me to prison in the morning if you want.”

 

Kim frowned, but didn’t move to stop the door closing. She could see the defeat in Shego’s eyes, if not in her bare shoulders. Perhaps she'd feel better in the morning. She might just need a day off like Kim herself had needed that day. After a long moment, she called through the door, pressing her hand against it as if that would help in expressing her concern. “Look, Shego… erm, Sheshona... whoever… It’ll be all right, okay?”

 

There was a grunt on the other side of the door, and that was all the response that came. After another long moment staring at the door, and knowing, or at least suspecting, how the woman on the other side must feel at losing something she considered a part of her identity; Kim gave up her lonesome watch and retreated back to her room. Despite her overwhelming concern, a day spent fighting Shego physically and verbally caught up to her rapidly and she fell to sleep quickly. It turned out to be a slightly fitful sleep.

 

In the guest room, the altered warrior had again flung herself to the bed and was caught in an odd frame of mind. One part of her, the part she now called Sheshona, wanted to break down and cry. She’d been abused, beaten physically, and leashed verbally. The other part, the one whispering in her ear that Shego still existed despite what she had told Kim, insisted that she would not cry; that she was going to be angry and righteously indignant about what had happened to her.

 

The G-rated mutterings continued for an unknown amount of time; Shego and Sheshona arguing both internally and verbally about her predicament. Finally consensus was reached between the warring aspects of her personalities. What she needed was a good rant. She couldn’t work up a really good head of steam with her tongue collared and leashed, however, and only one person could take her off the leash.

 

She was still under orders to “keep it down” and she did just that. She called on all of her thieving, sneaking abilities and slipped silently down the hallway to Kim’s door. She wondered how much money such intimate knowledge of the girl’s home could bring her. Any number of villains, super or otherwise, would pay through the nose to know where and how Possible slept. Shego, of course, had been here before, a few times actually, and most recently had spent over a week living with the girl.

 

She pushed that thought away. That way madness lay. ‘Shelly Go’ the substitute teacher had been trying to confess something to the ginger cheerleader when she had been switched back, and Shego didn’t want to know what it was. In truth, much of that final day was a blur, the after effects of having her polarity swapped at least a dozen times, but she was sure of one thing. “Shelly” was going to say something profoundly stupid and she was glad that it had been cut off. She really needed to thank Stoppable for that.

 

She pressed the door to Kim’s room open and slipped noiselessly inside. At first she thought that sleeping arrangements in the house had changed in the last six months. It took her a moment to realize that the head popping out from beneath the covers was not a house guest, nor was it Stoppable sneaking in for a late night booty call. The blonde head really did belong to Kim. Sheshona paused and studied the somnolent face. She remembered something like this from her days as ‘Shelly.’ Kim seemed incredibly peaceful and unaware when she was asleep, completely the opposite of her keen green eyes when she was awake, constantly scanning everything and looking for the next challenge.

 

Shaking herself out of the rather embarrassing consideration of her platinum nemesis, Shego decided to reach down and ring the undo command from the teen’s slender neck.

 

“Mmmmrppph get off Shego.”

 

“Yarg!”

 

Shego’s body involuntarily flung her backwards. She growled and got up, snarling dangerously and slawing her hands reflexively, as though she could still ignite her plasma. She stepped menacingly back towards the bed.

 

“Snnnnrt mmmmlllph roll over”

 

“Ooooph!”

 

Shego’s own marionette body threw her to the floor with a loud thump and she actually rolled over on her back and kicked her feet in the air. Clapping a hand irritably to her face and growling again, she crawled to her hands and knees. “Oh, you’re going to get it for that one you little bi- You darned little bbbbbb- Grrrr, you little brat!”

 

She glared intently at the girl’s still placid face. If she was acting, she was worthy of the academy award. There was no hint of a smirk on her face at the little commands.

 

“Snnnnoorrrk…”

 

“…shucks… She’s asleep!” ‘ _Shucks’_ was, of course, not the word Sheshona had intended to use, but it was the closest she could get under the Disney command.

 

She sat back on the floor and considered Kim’s still slumbering face. She noted, not for the first time that day that the kid looked cute as a blonde. Still, Kim was supposed to be a redhead. The girl, young woman really, was supposed to be a fire-breathing, green eyed, red-haired warrior angel and not a bombshell blonde.

 

Where the hell did that thought come from? That was a rather passionate image to have of her irksome little foe. She shook her head and groaned. She needed sleep. Things would be clearer in the morning. She looked back at Kim as she started to get up, and was struck by an impulse that Stoppable would qualify as wrongsick. She fiercely ignored it and practically ran from the room.

 

She should not be thinking about the girls lips like that, sleeping or not.

 

Back in the bedroom, the lips twitched, and the girl herself mumbled something else in her sleep. If she’d been awake, Kim would have denied it to her dieing breath. Fortunately for her sanity, she would not remember it when she awoke; and Shego had already left ear shot, so she couldn’t be compelled by it or know of it either.

 

“…mmmppphhhttttt just kiss me Shego mmmmmmmm…”

 

A dull smile spread over sleeping lips and all seemed quiet the rest of the night.


	8. Ninja Sneaky

Across town, Ron was also having a rather fitful night. He hadn’t been too thrilled with Wade’s declaration of Shego’s powerlessness, because it led to KP wanting to keep Shego in her own house instead of, you know, prison. On top of that, BN was out of Naco seasoning, so he’d had to settle for an enchirito for dinner, what with his parents again out of town for the week and Hana staying with their grandparents.

 

Ron had finally settled off into an uncertain sleep and was muttering about lawn gnomes and monkeys when the window to his bedroom opened and let in a gust of cool air. The breeze was blocked a moment later by a dark figure slinking in through the window. Slinking and dark were as to this figure as cold and squishy were to Pop Pop corn dog mini’s. The feminine form actually seemed to absorb light and sound.

 

Rufus, the ever vigilant member of the duo, however, noticed what Ron failed to. He rose up out of his shoe box on the dresser and rubbed his beady eyes. Ron was out like a light, but Rufus was still on duty, and he began chittering irritably at the intruder and flashing his gleaming white teeth menacingly. “Ninja! Ninja! Ron! ninja!”

 

He sniffed the air and blinked. Rufus knew this scent very well. Still, he was disturbed enough to keep up the alarm. This ninja only came to Middleton when there were problems. He strarted to scurry out of his box, intent on shaking his human awake. “Ron, wake up mmhmmm!”

 

“shhhhh”

 

The sound barely qualified as that, a sound. Yori held her hand to her masked lips in a shushing gesture, and then from her free hand drifted a fine white powder. It settled over the mole rat, who rapidly became dizzy, and was suddenly snoring in his box.

 

Once the interruption was dealt with, a pair of onyx eyes settled on Ron-sama. She removed the hardened steel climbing spikes from her right hand and leaned in, tenderly caressing Ron’s cheek. “Ron-kun… So kind…”

 

“mmmm…” came a sleepy response. Ron actually seemed to still from his fitful tossing at the touch.

 

The sound, and the sleepy smile, made Yori purr softly in response. She leaned closer to Ron, pressing her lithe weight onto his bed slightly, and was within inches of his lips when his eyes drifted open.

 

Now, waking up _from_ a dream about monkeys and lawn gnomes was disturbing enough. Waking up _to_ a masked figure just inches from your face, with a gloved hand on your skin, was enough to shock even a fairly stable person. Ron Stoppable barely qualified as ‘stable.’

 

“Gahhhh!!! Monkey ninjas!” He flailed and slapped at the figure above him.

 

Yori grit her teeth beneath her mask and sighed. This was not how she'd intended for this to go, it was supposed to be so much more… romantic.

 

A quick puff of the same dust and Ron collapsed back into bed dizzily, and was soon snoring. She leaned forward again, and gave him a soft kiss on the mouth, even though it was through her mask. Then she was gone as silently as she had appeared, leaving only a breeze through the open window as evidence of her presence.

 

So close, and yet so far. Obviously that dragon woman had the monkey master far too high strung for his own good or health. Perhaps tomorrow she could greet him properly when he was a little more aware.

 

\-----

 

As soon as Kim woke up from her slumber, which seemed, for some reason deeper than usual, she knew something was wrong. Something was absent.

 

Now, everyone in the house knew that there was a penalty for that one item being missing. The term ‘red headed temper’ gained frightening new meaning when that one item was MIA; and just because every hair on Kim’s body was currently blonde, didn’t mean that her temper was affected any. She did quick mental inventory.

 

The Tweebs knew better than to try stealing it. The black eyes, a complete set on each brother, saw to that. Mom had learned her lesson the morning she had snuck in and been struck by the peculiar urge to wash it. That had been ugly, but the grounding was worth it to get her point across. Daddy never even came to her room unless he was having a paranoid delusion that a boy was present, and he never actually entered, just peeked in.

 

No… there was only one person in the house who didn’t know the consequences of a missing Pandaroo. Oh… but she was going to learn. There was an unholy glint in Kim’s olive eyes that said as much.

 

The scene in the guest room was quite different at the moment. Unlike the scene in Kim’s room, which radiated murder; the guest room seemed tranquil, almost beatific.

 

On the pillow was a spray of rich mocha hair, an incredible amount of it in fact, which mostly obscured the face of the slumbering woman it belonged to. Her blankets, as usual, had been tossed off. It was something Sheshona/Shego had gotten used to over the years, her plasma heat generating discomfort, but it was a habit that remained unbroken in the power’s absence. Her body was barely covered as it was. Kim had lent her a tank top and a pair of panties for slumber, but they weren’t adequate to the task of covering a grown woman since they belonged to an eighteen year old girl.

 

Still, the nearly lewd display of her newly tanned body didn’t dispel the incredibly peaceful mood that pervaded the room. The reason for the mood of the two rooms was one and the same. Absence in one, and presence in the other.

 

Shego had originally intended just to screw with Possible’s head when she returned to her bedroom in the dead of night. She’d not been sure how she was going to accomplish this, but at least the princess seemed to have settled in to a slow and quiet sleep this time, and was not sleep-commanding her. She also pointedly ignored looking at the girl’s face.

 

That was not an easy task, considering how the moonlight glinted off of a slim trail of drool on pink lips. She was hypnotized for a long moment by that sight, and was going to deny that hypnosis till the day they put her in the ground. Then those lips had twitched a little, and hypnosis had turned to cold fear. She bolted out the door, fearing another insane command, and waited probably a full ten minutes before breathing deeply, relieved that none came.

 

When she returned, she pointedly avoided looking at Kim’s face. In doing so, she saw her target. It was smallish, and very threadbare. It had the head and body of a teddy bear, but the feet, tail, and ears of a kangaroo. There was a miniature version of it in a pouch on the belly. It probably used to be black and white… but it was threadbare now to the point of being gray all over.

 

And it was clutched possessively to Kim’s breast as she lay in bed. Shego remembered almost immediately from the brief week Drakken had fawned over DNAmy that this was a CuddleBuddy; a Pandaroo to be precise. Judging by its state it was the most precious thing in Kim’s room. Her original plan had been to find something incriminating to give to Kim's brothers, or at least to mess with. But she knew that Kim wouldn’t be the type to have anything juicy enough to suit her purposes. She was just too goody goody for her own good.

 

No, this would do much more nicely than stealing the personal massager that she now realized Kim certainly wouldn’t even think to own. Kim really and honestly was that prudish and innocent, she realized as she looked around the room. Extricating the plushie from Kim's grasp turned out to be just about the greatest challenge of her thieving career. Yet, between patience and diligence, she finally secured the prize and snuck away with it, her victim none-the-wiser. The whole escapade took fifteen minutes, including her nine-minute time out to avoid any somnolent commands.

 

“Honestly, an eighteen year old girl who sleeps with a stuffed animal… and they call me mal-adjusted.” Shego snorted and settled back onto the guest bed, looking at the care worn stuffie and trying to see if there was something about it that oozed happiness.

 

She didn’t see anything and rolled over onto her side, pulling up the comforter over herself out of the type of modesty that shielded her from the prying eyes of henchmen; never mind that she’d kick off the comforter in the night any way. Shego had planned on hiding the cuddle plush once she returned to her room, but as soon as she lay back to examine it, sleep settled over her. This mattress was far nicer than the futon in her rent-a-lair, and so were the sheets. And she was totally exhausted mentally and physically from the aborted robbery, the escape from Drakken, and being probed, poked, and prodded via Kimmunicator.

 

Shego didn’t even register that she’d clutched the pandaroo to her chest and tucked her face against it as she drifted off. For some reason the nearly bald old plush had a relaxing aura to it… or was it a relaxing familiar scent?

 

The guest room door moved for Kim that morning as though it were the Red Sea and she was Moses on a very bad day. She glared into the room, and the bed sheets threatened to ignite under her gaze as she took in Shego. She ignored the faint impulse to blush at the fact that Shego was one sleepy movement away from immodesty; and glared at the solid wall of hair that covered the pillow, willing it to catch fire.

 

It didn’t combust, but Sheshona did seem to turn her head under the glare. Kim’s gaze suddenly softened as the hair moved enough to reveal Pandaroo nestled against Shego’s neck. When the mercenary inhaled softly in her sleep against the plush, Kim found herself doing the same. She was surprised at how completely… not evil… the formerly malachite warrior looked in her sleep. The tension instantly seemed to melt out of Kim’s body at the sight of the older woman simply sleeping with her plush, and she sighed again.

 

After a moment, she caught herself and growled. When had she gone so soft towards Shego? It wasn’t like this was the innocent and harmless Miss Go in the guest room. Sure, fine… the woman had had a rough weekend, but that didn’t excuse the rest of her adult life, not in Kim’s eyes. Okay… well she could forgive Shego a little sleep since she could sympathize with the violation Drakken had put the mercenary through. And Pandaroo was ‘there to care’ as the CuddleBuddy mantra went.

 

Grumbling at her softness, Kim turned on her heel and did her best to work her rage back up, half-storming towards the bathroom to get around for the day.  The mercenary had darned well better not get used to this treatment. As soon as this whole mess was sorted out she was going to prison; and Kim was going to reclaim her home, her plushie, and her proper hair color.

 

In the guest room, the guest had woken up and cracked one eye, smiling with lazy cat-like contentment. The first thought that rolled through her sleep-addled mind as she saw a pair of pink pajama pants retreating from her door was, _‘nice ass.’_ Yes, she could at least still curse in her own mind.

 

It took a full five minutes of lying in bed to realize who that ass belonged to. Pandaroo served one more purpose that morning; it muffled the frustrated scream of Sheshona Elsbeth “Shego” Go. Apparently things weren’t any better or saner in the morning after all.

 

\-----

 

_Beep beep ba beep_

 

Ron groaned and rolled over… He’d slept the sleep of the dead apparently, and now he was paying for it with stiffness in places he didn’t even know could be stiff. As he awoke, the keen nose of a cook told him there was something familiar in the air; the scent of Jasmine.

 

_Beep beep ba beep_

 

The beeping of the Kimmunicator distracted him from the fragrance in the air. He blinked and felt some grit in his hair… “Rufus! Were you eating naco’s without me?”

 

Rufus groaned and popped up out of his pet bed shoe box thing in the dresser. Apparently he was suffering the same zombie-sleep. “Hu-uh hu-uh.”

 

_Beep beep ba beep_

 

“Yeah… go Wade. Wait a minute, Why do I have the old kimmunicator?”

 

“You took it with you after we scanned Shego, remember? You said it would be a bad idea for her to be able to try to alter the results.”

 

“Oh yeah…” Ron scratched the back of his head and sighed. “Please tell me you found a way to reverse all the weirdness that’s been going on?”

 

“Nope, afraid all I’ve got this morning is bad news Ron. It looks like someone gave the Prime Minister of Taiwan a Drak-co hygene product. I don’t want to know why he was using baby wipes… but now he’s well…”

 

“A baby?”

 

“Mentally, yeah. Give the man a cupie doll.”

 

“Gah! Any other problems yet?”

 

“Well, I’m getting sporadic reports… Nothing as major as the president of Taiwan, but you know… This is only going to get worse, and I can’t seem to find a way to convince governments all over the world to recall millions of products from store shelves. Oh yeah, what’s that stuff in your hair?”

 

“Naco crumbs… Rufus had a late night snack party.”

 

“no.. nope nope hu-uh” Rufus crossed his arms over his little chest and blew a raspberry.

 

“Oh, great, now my little buddy is lying to me, what next? Kim and shego will run off together?”

 

“Oh man, don’t even joke Ron. I’ve had enough trying to close down those GoKi sites with the bad photoshop jobs.”

 

“All right Wade-man. The Ronster will keep an eye out for any Drak-co stuff around here… god forbid Bonnie or Barkin get into something like that shampoo and go all blonde and weird. Though something about Bonnie in a diaper and a pacifier…”

 

Ron had to shut off the Kim’com at the unceasing flow of gags and tirades against that mental image inflicted upon Wade.

 

\-----

 

By the time Kim had made it to school, she’d managed to again work up a good irritation with the world in general. The soft indulgence of the early morning was forgotten as she stormed the hallways and approached her locker; only to find Bonnie Rockwaller standing in front of it, waiting for her.

 

Kim couldn’t say precisely what she was angry with now, aside from the sight of “Queen B” but she could say what had led up to it. The theft of Pandaroo so brazenly, and then the way Shego cuddled her beloved plush as though she actually needed it. The mere fact that She was going soft on her nemesis, probably another after-effect of the shampoo, and then the tweebs plugging her all breakfast long for info about their new house guest.

 

“Ohhhhhhhhh. Nice dye job K. Smarty Mart having a two for one on hussy-girl?”

 

Kim’s teeth gritted hard enough to throw off sparks and she scowled. She bit her tongue however. After she’d actually made the tweebs go jump in a lake (well nearly, her parents had managed to stop them before they got out of the house) she’d vowed to watch her tongue lest she inadvertently ruin someone’s day, car, or body with her foul mood and new-found abilities.

 

“What’s the matter Kim? Peroxide got your tongue? Or is it really true that blondes are just dumber?” Bonnie looked back and forth amongst her posse, most of whom were blonde. They laughed none-the-less, because it was expected of them.

 

Her knuckles clenching and unclenching, Kim began to wish she’d stayed home and kept an eye on Shehona, not come in to school for this abuse. Unfortunately, Shego was able to be held in place with a simple ‘stay’ command of sorts, And Kim's parents had insisted she take her attitude out of the house and not use it as an excuse to let her education be wasted.

 

“Oh… I bet I know what it is! Ron! You wanted to see how he feels all the time, being a dumb blonde! Well hate to say it Kim, but looks like you went a little past Stoppable stupid.” Bonnie extended her finger to the sky in an eureka moment of discovery, and earned a genuine chuckle at the expense of Kim and her less-than-popular partner and boyfriend. “He can’t really be that good a lover, can he? To make you do this?”

 

Kim didn’t even think, she just retorted with the first acid tongued response that leapt to mind. “And just how good is your current _lover_ , Bonnie? We all know Brick left you!”

 

“Larry’s a bit slow on the uptake, Kim, but you wouldn’t believe what he can do with his…”

 

Bonnie’s aquiline eyes went wide as saucers. How? Why? What had she just blurted out?! No… that was a secret so closely guarded that even Tara didn’t know about it, and Tara knew all of Bonnie’s darkest whisperings. Why had she just blurted it out to the entire cheer-squad and her nemesis?!

 

“YARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ahhhhhhhh!!!!!!” She ran, screaming, down the hallways. Somewhere in her mind, she hoped she would be able to claim it was just something said in a moment of temporary insanity and not the truth.

 

Kim’s eyes were equally as wide as she took in the retreating form of her foe. Bonnie, sleeping with her nerdy cousin… that was just… disturbing. Kim found one more thing to be angry about and sighed, shaking her head, and then banging it against her locker door. Her mind was now being assaulted by her nebbish cousin and Bonnie Rockwaller in the throws of passion.

 

Hopefully the rest of the day could be salvaged, as long as she could learn to keep her mouth shut. 


	9. Impulse Control Problems

“Bored… bored bored bored bored… So freaking flapping bored.” Sheshona repeated her mantra for the umpteenth time. She was stuck in the Possible household, with no where to go and nothing particularly entertaining to do.

 

_“You are not to leave this house unless it’s on fire, or someone is chasing you.”_ was the Princess’s command this morning before she’d left. It was proving particularly effective. She hadn’t even tried to leave so far, but she wasn’t sure if that was the command, or just her lack of places to go.

 

 Once Sheshona had gotten over her morning vomit-inducing thoughts of ogling Kim Possible’s backside, she found that she couldn’t even seem to cause trouble. Not that she was a particularly spiteful person, or into causing mayhem for no reason what so ever; even though some would say she was… No, she wanted to start a fire, or wreck the place up and get the cops after her, because she figured that was the only way she could get around the command.

 

But for some reason she just couldn’t bring herself to set a hand towel ablaze on the stove or blow out a wall with a ruptured gas main. The Possibles, of course, subscribed to no pay movie channels, and nothing was on basic cable at the moment that she wanted to watch either, so that let TV right out. Additionally, just as she had suspected last night, and confirmed this morning by rifling Kimmie’s room, the cheerleader had nothing remotely interesting or incriminating hidden under her mattress or at the back of her closet.

 

Well, there was the vault with the blue and white battle suit, but it required a hand scan and a retina check. Shego had spent perhaps an hour simply studying the locking mechanism, but the nerd who built it for Kim had made sure there was no way around it, not after the doofus had managed to swipe the suit and then gotten it stolen by Professor Dementor. So now that she was done ruminating over the locked vault in the back of Kimmie’s closet, Shego had the TV on, purely for the sake of noise, and was sitting listlessly on the couch as though her left butt cheek had become a part of it.

 

“So bleeding bored! Gah!” Bleeding was about as stern a curse as Shego could work up. She knew that it was actually pretty raunchy in Australia and Britain, but since she was raised in the states, it wasn’t much to her. That was another thing contributing to her dullness. She was _feeling_ bland.

 

Sheshona had thus far lost her powers, her verdant skin tone, her eyesight, and her ability to use colorful language. So she was basically just…

 

“I’m a freaking member of the Possible clan, aren’t I?” She sighed and sat back into the couch, becoming even more an expression of it rather than a person sitting astride it.

 

It was only then, after sitting astride the couch for the better part of an hour, that Shego noticed the book shelves in the home-office. She arched a brow and stood up, wandering over to scan the titles, expecting to find bland technical journals belonging to the Possible parents.

 

“Hmmm, let’s see here…” Shego blinked in outright shock as her finger tip settled on a spine at random. “Pearl? As in…?”

 

She pulled the worn tome off the shelf and looked at the dusty inside of the jacket. Then she cursed her diminished faculties and pulled her glasses out of her shirt pocket. “Thank goodness for Lens Smither’s glasses in about an hour. Now, is this what I think it is?”

 

She grinned and suddenly obtained new-found respect for one of Kim’s parents. Taking the biography of Janice Joplin and her troubles, she settled back into the couch in another languid position and turned to the first page. It had been a long, _long_ time since Sheshona had actually sat down and read anything longer than a Villains Monthly magazine article; and she relished the chance to renew the hobby in this tragic tale of a musical bad girl.

                                                                                                                                                                                

\-----

 

Drakken giggled gleefully. His “Relaxation Extreme” shower gel was working like a charm in its first major field test. Shego had been right, although the mad doctor would not admit it. The key had been in removing the bubblegum scent from the stuff.

 

Truly though, his master stroke had been in delivering it to the Middleton headquarters of a certain super-secret law enforcement agency. Government Agencies loved freebies, since their budgets were so closely monitored these days… so a few crates of free hygiene products that were ‘factory seconds’ and ‘off label’, including the aforementioned body-wash, were gladly accepted and distributed without a second thought.

 

Now, he was watching the fun and chaos ensue.

 

\-----

 

Wade pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger and sighed. Something as really not right with Kim’s last brain scan, the one he had snuck while they were scanning Shego the day before. Several of her hormone levels were off slightly and her frontal lobe activity was elevated. It was absolutely nothing to indicate she was under mind control of any kind, but it was also not normal. Maybe if he called Kim’s mom, she was the brain expert after all.

 

He was about to when his terminal beeped and he was face to face with Dr. Betty Director. If she was calling him in person, rather than routing through the normal channels, something major must be up.

 

“Mr Loade. Thank Goodness. Something unprecedented is happening here at Global Justice… I desperately need your assistance to- William Du! Get down from that all-terrain insurgency vehicle this instant!”

 

Wade winced at the sharp interruption, and tried to figure out what was going on to have Betty Director running off and yelling at her top agent as though he were a.. “…oh no…”

 

Dr. Director returned to the comm a moment later and shook her head. As she did so, Wade caught a glance at her hair; there were a few streaks of color in it. Thankfully they weren’t blonde at least, but they didn’t seem to be her normal color either. “Doctor Director… Ma’am, Do you, by chance, dye your hair?”

 

“Mister Loade. I hardly think that this is the time to be asking about my personal products. Why do you as- William! Put that Stop Watch down before you- Excuse me a moment please Mister Loade.”

 

Wade could only watch her step away again, and shudder. While he waited, he started putting together more questions, and the order he wanted to ask them in. He could only hope that Betty Director’s vanity wasn’t sucking her into this madness as well. If it was, what form that madness might take.

 

\-----

 

So far Ron had narrowly averted three disasters. Apparently Drak-co products were on sale at Smarty-Mart, and he’d only narrowly prevented Brick Flagg from using something called “Relaxation Extreme” shower gel. After that, He’d found two girls trading packages of “Dr. D’s Miracle Bath Salts” and “Natural Gleam” hair dye. He clapped his hand over his face and groaned softly, wondering from what direction the next assault would come. He had Monique searching the girl’s showers, bathrooms, and lockers for the stuff, and he just hoped no one had actually used any of it yet.

 

He was about to move on to his next class when he heard gasps and whispers echoing down the hallways. Earlier this morning, those gasps, he knew, had been following the newly platinum Kim… He only hoped that was still the case; even though his high-school instincts told him that his hopes were in vain. Turning to face the direction of the rumblings, Ron’s jaw hit the floor, and his blood-flow was drastically redirected away from his brain to parts unknown.

 

Woozy and befuddled as he suddenly found himself, he didn’t immediately recognize the vision in red silk walking directly towards him. No one else in the halls did either. This was not a Middleton high student. If she had been, she would have instantly knocked Bonnie from her perch as “most spanking body” on the cheer squad. The young woman was a Venus carved in stone, every toned muscle in her body clearly visible as she walked, or more accurately, prowled down the corridor.

 

Ron was not in a position to appreciate or comprehend it, given the absence of any brain power at the moment; but the way the Asian Goddess moved made it abundantly clear that her sculpted muscles, feminine though they were, were all business. Six foot tall football line-backers actually stumbled to get out of her way as she proceeded towards the awe-struck blonde. One big burly, who wasn’t looking at her and hence was unaware that she was the source of the disturbance, felt a honey-colored hand placed between his shoulder blades.

 

“Hey, watch where you’re-“

 

“Out of my way bakayarou.” The small woman, her obsidian hair bound ornately in a knot atop her head, threw the defensive end across fifteen feet of hallway  and into a water fountain with one motion of her left hand.  Clad in a form fitting and traditional Chinese style red silk dress that bespoke fragility and delicacy her honey colored skin seeming soft and graceful; the deceptively powerful woman continued stalking towards her target.

 

Yori finally arrived at Ron’s side next to the bank of lockers and seemed to melt against him, her sinuous and sculpted body suddenly becoming an expression of liquid as she pressed her hands lightly to his chest and laid her head on his shoulder. Her lithe frame formed to his hips and one leg rose and curled around his in a display that made even Bonnie Rockwaller, who was just coming out of the girl’s bathroom, blush in shock at the display of raw sensuality.

 

“I missed you Ron-kun… You’ve been away so long and I just couldn’t stand the thought that you were on the other side of the world…” Onyx eyes, so black that they now seemed bottomless, batted at him; her face so close to Ron’s that her lashes actually tickled his chin.

 

 “Ah… bu… huh…” was all Ron could muster in response.

 

He hadn’t actually moved in the last thirty seconds, and he was still staring at the spot some forty feet further down the corridor where he had caught his first glimpse of the ninja goddess, his mouth moving soundlessly as it asked for further instructions from his absent mind. The obvious disconnect between his body and his brain made him completely unaware that Mr. Barkin had come out of his class to resolve the commotion.

 

Yori, however, did notice the large man, and knew instinctively that his intention was to interrupt her reunion with her hero and personal savior. One hand moved from Ron’s chest and slid to her hair. In a movement too quick to be detected by the human eye, one of the ornately decorated hair sticks that was holding her onyx coif in place was drawn out and flung down the corridor at the intimidating teacher.

 

“Stoppable! You know the rules about Public Displays of Affect- _Cheese and Rice!”_

 

The resounding _thunk_ of a solid steel spike that had been disguised as a lacquered hair stick was the cause of Barkin’s near-profanity. It was also the item pinning the two hundred and fifty pound man to the doorway by his collar, having avoided his throat by a fraction of an inch.

 

The ninja assassin had not otherwise moved from half-nuzzeling Ron’s neck and was still purring soft words of longing at him, her sculpted leg caressing up and down his, when Monique and Kim came around the opposite corner to go into Barkin’s class.

 

Kim’s instincts kicked in and she immediately moved to get Barkin unpinned from the doorway and ask him what was going on. It took her thirty seconds of pulling to yank the stiletto-like hair stick out of the wood it was solidly embedded in. By the time she looked down the hallway towards whatever had been the source of the projectile, there was a vacant spot surrounded by dumbfounded students.

 

“Mo… who was that?” Shim blinked confusedly, suddenly on edge as she looked around for whoever had flung the deadly spike.

 

“I don’t know girlfriend… but it almost looked like Ron… With some geisha hanging off of him.” She shook her head softly and scratched her temple, because there was absolutely no sign of whoever _had_ been standing there a moment before.

 

\-----

 

It took a full two minutes for Ron’s brain to reconnect with his body. It started with the sense of touch. Something arm, firm, and inviting was pressing entirely along one side of his body. Also… his boxers were feeling very tight suddenly. Not an entirely unpleasant tightness, but it was starting to get uncomfortable, and he didn’t care to think how it would feel if he couldn’t adjust himself soon.

 

Next his hearing came back to his consciousness. He could hear soft breathing, and it wasn’t his own. Then there was the soft shifting of cotton on silk. He _couldn’t_ hear the normal hallway and between-class sounds.

 

 

Smell drifted back at about the same time… A very relaxing scent, delicate and feminine, wafted to his nose. “Mmmmmmm Jasmine.”

 

That tickled something in the back of Ron’s brain. ‘ _wait a minute… this morning… at the house…’_

 

Sight, and probably taste, finally returned to Ron. He was definitely not in the hallway any more. He was lying on the ground outside the school, and when he looked down his vision was filled with a half-disheveled, obsidian-colored hair style. The coif moved and turned, and Ron stared into liquid eyes that seemed odd somehow.

 

 It took him a moment to realize that eyes that should be a familiar coffee brown had actually turned to black. He could only just make out the difference between the iris and the pupil of each eye, because they were just that dark. Mentally, he panned out a little bit to take in the full face. Or he would have, had his mouth not been seized at that moment in a rather impassioned kiss.

 

_‘yup, sense of taste definitely back. mmmmmmmm... hey wait a –!’_

Ron pushed the woman off of him, and this time succeeded in making his eyes take in the entire face. “Yori-san?! What the heck are you-? Why are we-? I thought you didn’t-!”

 

Yori again tried to seize Ron’s lips with her own, purring softly and grinding her muscular body along his very suggestively, and that was making it more difficult for Ron to concentrate on getting out well formed questions. “I missed you Ron-kun… Please, it will be my honor to show you just how much, and with what parts the most…”

 

“ _Yori!_ ” A hand on Ron’s lap brought everything in to crystal clarity for the sidekick, and he looked at her altered eyes again. “HEY, no touchy my monkey!” Sighing and trying to ignore the treacherous part of his brain that insisted he not do anything to interrupt what was happening, he wriggled free, “Oh man… Drakken got to you too! Darn it! What was it this time? Makeup, skin scrubs? Feminine hygene products? Ewww by the way.”

 

Yori pouted as he squirmed out from beneath her and pushed her hand away from his lap. She sat up, straightening the silk of her dress, and sighing heavily, still trying to reach out for him. “That doragon fujo has twisted you against me, hasn’t she?” Her voice suddenly hardened, and it frightened Ron. “I shall show her the error of her ways and the necessity that she find another to spend her twisted affections on, Ron-sama.”

 

Ron rested his hands firmly on her shoulders, and stared into her darksome eyes. “Yori… listen to the Ronster. This isn’t you, okay? Doctor Drakken did something to your brain. He’s got you acting like a… oh… what word is it? Oh, yeah, an uwakionna. This is not my Yori!”

 

“But Ron-kun, I am only a uwakionna for you….” She purred very suggestively and leaned in once more, resting her hands on his shoulders, toying with his collar.

 

Ron couldn’t believe that Yori had just said that… whatever that was. He suddenly wished he had his Japanese dictionary with him. As he pushed her back yet again, earning another petulant pout, Rufus awoke and scurried out of Ron’s pocket. He ran up Yori’s bare arm and started examining her, peeling open one eye widely, staring into it, sniffing at her, and tapping his chin.

 

“Rufus-chan! That tickles, please, stop it so that I may pledge my undying love for Ronald-sama!” She giggled as Rufus scurried down her dress and tugged off one of her zori, sniffing at her foot.

 

“Ron! Here! Lookee lookee!” Rufus started pointing at Yori’s feet excitedly and chirring at his discovery, because he could actually smell Drakken’s product on her. He jumped up and down and excitedly made rubbing motions on his own hind paw.

 

“Ron-kun… my feet are so… unwomanly… please, allow me to bind them for you!”

 

“What?! Yori No!” His eyes widened as she actually volunteered for the barbaric practice of deforming her feet, and he shook her more firmly by the shoulders to try to snap her out of it. “Yori! What’s the matter with you? You’re not acting like the good ninja you are!”

 

“This is me, Ron…” She purred, leaned up against him, again fluttering her eyelashes at him and nuzzeling his neck. “I feel so much more free… so uninhibited now! Everything is so clear to me!”

 

If Ron’s Japanese was stronger, he might have recognized that she was getting worse, now even dropping the honorifics from his name as she again tried to snake her clawed fingers towards his lap. As it was, his treacherous mind again tried to convince him to let her leave her hand there, because it felt so good. That deviant little section of brain even went so far as to tell him that this was something Kim didn’t do for him, and definitely something that he should consider letting Yori do if Kim wouldn’t.

 

Finally his higher self won out and Ron again gently removed her hand from his lap, just in time to stop her dangerously pointed nails from unfastening his fly. “Yori… okay, I know you’re not feeling quite normal right now, right? So listen. We’ll take you over to Wade’s, and see if we can’t fix you, okay? Get you back to your old self.”

 

Yori’s pout tore at his heart the same way Kim’s PDP did. Thankfully, Yori didn’t have it down quite yet, so the effect wasn’t as catastrophic on him. Still, Ron knew he needed to convince her to come along peacefully, as part of his mind recalled where her missing hair stick was, namely, embedded in a door back inside the school. She was obviously a bit judgment impaired at the moment.

 

“Look! I know! Um… I like the old you, Yori! Right? The girl I met in Yamanouchi? So if you come with me to Wade, we can make you more perfect for me, huh?”

 

The ninja, her impulses twisted and magnified by Drakken’s product, thought that anything that would make Ron love her the way he loved that dragon woman was an excellent thing indeed. So she nodded rapidly and smiled a particularly large smile, standing with him. “Then perhaps we can…”

 

Ron grabbed her hand as he saw it again moving towards his crotch, and decided he needed to change into some looser fitting pants, because her repeated touching was having a very profound physical effect on that part of him. “Ahem… yeah… we’ll see.”

 

Part of him actually _did_ want to see.

 

\-----

 

Kim was really beginning to learn the limits of her mind control powers. Apparently, compelling people to answer questions wasn’t the same as compelling _intelligent answers_ from them. So far she had interviewed six people about what they had seen, three boys, and three girls. The boys could only, it seemed, remember a body. And usually only one or two apects of that body. She gave up questioning boys after Jimmy Flagg, Brick’s little brother, got stuck in a loop about how tight the mysterious woman’s backside was.

 

Unfortunately the girls weren’t much better in answering her questions. Bonnie seemed obsessed with how “that dorkus maximus” had earned the attentions of a grown woman, who was, in her opinion, “dry humping him in the middle of the freaking hall!”

 

Monique, who Kim had yet to confess her mind-control powers to, wasn’t much better. She was obsessed with the woman’s spankin’ geisha-ware and was hell-bent on crafting something similar for herself, right after she hit the gym, that is.

 

Sighing, she called Wade, who started tracking Ron’s ‘chip’ and was going to call her when he found her partner and boyfriend. That dealt with, Kim turned her mind to her other problem, Shego.

 

She was beginning to feel a little conflicted about the villainess, she realized. Now that her mindless anger over the theft of Pandaroo was spent, she was recognizing that it was symptomatic of her wavering opinion of the older woman. It felt different this time, though… Different from the time a few months back when Shego had been transformed into Miss Go, the substitute teacher. As she walked by a little boutique store on her way home, she looked into the window and smiled broadly at an impulse. A few minutes later she walked out of the store with a small pink sack that read “There to Care” on the side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Doragon fujo = Dragon Woman or Dragon Sorceress   
> Uwakionna = slut  
> Zori = traditional Japanese sandals


	10. “Boundary Issues”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, the characters switch back and forth between languages. Anything that is italicized and underlined is spoken in Japanese entirely. Other times only some words are in Japanese, those are listed at the end of the chapter.

“Hey… Wade-man, you home? What am I saying? Of course you’re home.” Ron peered around the edge of the door frame and into Wade’s inner sanctum.

 

“Yeah. Ron, where have you been? Kim is worried sick. Oh, hey Yori-chan… Whoa, nice dress!”

 

“Yeah, about that Wade… could you work you scan magic on the Yori-meister for us… she’s um… not herself.”

 

“Oh no… they got you too Yori? Crud. Ron, Bring her in… Drakken seems to have gotten to Global Justice as well. We need to nip this in the bud.”

 

“Why does everyone keep saying that someone ‘got me?’ I am perfectly fine. In fact, I am better!” She smiled broadly and leaned again up against Ron as she stepped inside the room. “I have my Ron-sama at my side… all is right with the world.”

 

Wade was momentarily hypnotized by the way the Ninja moved, and the way the dress clung to her. Then he was hypnotized again by her smile. It was such a happy, content, honest smile that he couldn’t help return it. Finally, the dark boy shook his head and turned back to his computer, “Ron… Are her eyes…?”

 

“Yeah, black. It’s kinda pretty, but in a weird way.” He looked down at Yori, who in turn batted her lashes at him and smiled dreamily.

 

“That might be a good thing. So far everyone who’s exposed to this drak-co stuff has some kind of physical change, Shego’s body, Dr. Director’s highlights, Yori’s eyes, and Kim’s hair. Lord only knows what Agent Du looks like. The president of Taiwan apparently lost all of his hair. At least it makes them easier to track down.”

 

Ron felt his ninja companion stiffen at the mention of Kim’s name, and sighed softly. “Great, we can find them, but can we do anything for them? Oh, yeah, Rufus can smell this stuff too it seems.”

 

Wade waited as Yori was guided into the full-body scanner, and then he ran his programs. “I don’t know wade. Yori, um… have you gotten ahold of anything from ‘Drak-co?’”

 

“Hai Wade-san. My lovely little foot stone! It makes me feel so free! Free to be with my Ron.” She looked at him with fluttering lashes again and Ron swallowed.

 

“Mmmhmmm… and where is this foot stone now?” Wade tried to ignore the way Yori was flaunting it for Ron. It was a bit difficult, given her dress and they way she was using her body like a neon sign.

 

“Oh, it is in my hand bag! Would you like to try it? I am sure you will find it is so very relaxing!.” Yori was opening her small purse when a robotic hand reached down from Wade’s ceiling and snatched the stone out of it.

 

“I am so not touching that thing. Okay Yori… um… Why don’t you stay here with me, while Ron and Kim go to Drakken’s to see if they can help?”

 

“絶対にない! 私はそのドラゴンの雌犬に私のRon を断念しない! 決して!”

 

Ron and Wade both backed away as Yori seemed to explode and gesticulated wildly, shaking her fist and pointing to the heavens, slipping into full Japanese as she ranted.

 

“…ooooohkay then…” Wade could only look on after a moment and shake his head. “Well, hopefully I can compare Yori, Shego, and Kim's readings and get a better baseline on this Drak-co stuff for you, Ron. So far I have nothing from the scans I ran on Kim and Shego.”

 

“Okay, I’ll go hook up with Kim and you book us a ride to the Caribbean ‘secret base’ of Dr. Drakken.” Ron looked at Yori sadly, and nodded. He couldn’t help feeling torn, but for the moment, he was going to attribute that to the parts of him that she'd been grabbing at all afternoon.

 

\-----

 

_Beep beep ba beep_

 

“Oh what fresh fucking hell is this?” Shego grumbled loudly and sat aside her book, not even sure where that tell-tale beep was coming from. Then she froze, “Wait just a mother fucking minute… Oh hells yes! I can curse again!!!! I wonder if I can…”

 

She got up and started walking towards the front door, but her body stopped her. “Shit. Still can’t leave, can I? Oh well… it’s a fucking start.

 

_Beep beep ba beep_

 

She found the kimmunicator, one of the fanciful new wrist-watch style ones, and flipped it back and forth. “How in the seven hells do you answer this thing?”

 

Finally she pushed a big blue button, and was greeted with the little black kid, upside down. “Um… hi?”

 

She turned it over and looked at the small screen. “How the fuck does princess stand having this clunker on her wrist?”

 

“Shego. Why do you have the kimmunicator? Never mind. Is Kim home yet?” Wade looked frazzeled, and Shego could tell he wasn’t happy she had one of Kim’s precious little toys.

 

“Nope, sorry turbo-nerd, haven’t seen her yet.” She sighed, and thanked whatever god there was that he hadn’t asked about her-

 

“Nice glasses, by the way. They suit you.”

 

“Oh fuck me sideways… Good bye nerdenheimer… I’ll have her call you when she gets in.”

 

Shego pushed the button again, and it thankfully ended the call. She then sat back, and simply because she could, she let off a string of every curse word she knew in three languages.

 

Her sing-song cussing was not interrupted as the front door opened and a certain until-recently-redheaded cheerleader slipped inside. Kim leaned against the front door and considered Shego quietly, watching the amused smile the older woman wore, and chuckling a bit to herself as Shego actually began to say words like ‘fuku’ and ‘Scheiße’ to the rhythm of a nursery rhyme.

 

“Enjoying yourself Sheshona?”

 

“Gahhhh!”

 

Kim laughed softly as Shego flopped off of the couch in surprise, sending a book and her reading glasses, and Kim’s backup kimmunicator it seemed, sailing. After a moment, she walked over to the couch, picking up the things and still giggling just a bit. “So, you can swear again huh?”

 

“Yeah, looks like your commands wear off, cupcake. I still couldn’t leave the house though, damnit.” Shego was smirking playfully as well, and rolled her eyes at her inability to break that command.

 

“So, like twenty-nine hours then?”

 

“Looks like. Oh, by the way, your dial-a-geek called. He needs you to get a hold of him.” She rolled her eyes and pointed to the kimmunicator that was identical to the one strapped to the cheerleader’s wrist.

 

“Oh! Did he find Ron?!” Kim moved to connect to Wade via her ‘com, but all she got was static. Then she tried the backup unit sitting on the coffee table. Same thing. “Shit!”

 

“Princess! Language, please!” Shego chuckled and lightly slapped Kim in the shoulder.

 

Kim blinked a bit confusedly, and then her pink-skinned cheeks turned crimson and she demurely covered her mouth. Shego looked on, and laughed even more.

 

“Oh please kitten, you were having fun with it yesterday! Go ahead, say another!” She grinned mischievously and poked Kim a bit, prodding her to do it again.

 

“No!” Kim was blushing fiercely now and shaking her head.

 

It was about this point that Shego noticed the pink plastic sack she had. “Oh god, don’t tell me you’re feeding your cuddle-bunny fetish.”

 

“Huh?” Kim was a little too flustered now between Shego’s teasing, Wade’s lack of communication, and Ron’s absence to process that for a moment.”

 

“The sack, cheerleader…” Shego pointed.

 

“Oh! Oh yeah… well um I… I thought since you took…” Kim suddenly seemed completely at a loss, more so than she had a moment before even.

 

Shego grabbed the sack from the befuddled heroine and yanked out its contents. She boggled at it, not comprehending, “What the fuck is this shit?”

 

She held in her hand an odd little creature of fluff and fleece. It had a soft black body and a head with big floppy ears and a large up-turned nose, along with beady little black and green eyes. On either side of the body were soft, green metallic fabric wings; which shimmered softly and looked like they belonged on a butterfly or a moth. 

 

Kim, still blushing, turned towards Shego and held up the little cardboard tag, which read “Celeste.”

 

“It’s a Lunabat! And it's Cuddle Buddy, not Bunny. I saw it on my way home, and I just thought of you. Its… its all right, isn’t it?”

 

Kim couldn’t understand why she was suddenly so nervous, and why her voice seemed to be seeking approval for a simple gift. She kept watching Shego, nervously, for her response.

 

Shego was a bit dumbfounded. Such a simple thing. A stupid little stuffed animal, but someone was giving it to her. Not because of a threat, not because of a bribe… Not even because she wanted it. Just… because.

 

Her body started to rebel against her will then. Her throat started to tighten up a little bit, as did her chest. Her eyes began to water and she sniffled softly, unsure of how to respond to the gesture, not hearing the question that followed.

 

“Shego? Erm, Sheshona? I’m sorry if it’s not okay! I can take it back, really! Look, I’ll just…” Km started reaching for the toy, only to have it snatched away; Shego clutching it to her and shaking her head, a few tear drops flying.

 

“Shego? What’s wrong?”

 

She sniffled, not looking at Kim, trying to force herself back under control. She couldn’t believe she was crying in front of her arch foe… damn those mind control powers! Of course, Kim had not ordered Shego to cry, or to do anything for that matter; but that was her story, and she was sticking to it.

 

For all of ten seconds. “It’s…” sniff, “It’s just that,” sniff, “no one’s given me a present since,” sniff, “…since I was twelve… …and… ” And then she was clutching the soft little cuddle-buddy tightly to her chest and shaking her head more, trying to deny that a stuffed animal legally purchased from a store was suddenly more precious to her than the whole world that Drakken had promised.

 

Kim couldn’t help herself. She reached out and hugged Shego to her, rubbing her shoulders a bit and holding on to the softly sobbing thief and fighting a few tears of her own. She couldn’t even begin to imagine spending half her life without so much as a simple gift from a friend. No wonder Sheshona was so abrasive, so bitter.

 

It wasn’t that simple, but for the moment that didn’t matter. They stayed like that for a few minutes, during which Ron let himself in.

 

“Oh, man! Now that’s just sick and wrong! Has everyone lost their mind?!”

 

The two women flung themselves apart for some reason and stared up at Ron in shocked silence for a moment.

 

“Where have you been!? Who kidnapped you? Are you okay?”

 

“What? The doofus was missing? Is that what nerdlinger wanted?”

 

Ron looked between the two of them, and wondered why they _both_ looked like they’d been crying, but shrugged. “Yeah… erm… about that... KP… Yori’s in town. She’s been hit by Drak-co too.”

 

“Oh damnit…” Kim pinched her eyes shut and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Ron blinked in mild shock, and Shego just giggled softly through the last vestiges of her tearful sniffles.

 

\-----

 

Now, if you asked the average fourteen year old boy what he’d think about having a nineteen year old female ninja putting on a demonstration of her prowess for him in his own bedroom while wearing a clingy red silk dress, he’d be thrilled. He wouldn’t be capable of verbalizing how thrilled he was, probably.

 

If you asked Wade Loade, he’d beg you to get Yori Akematsu out of his lab before she broke anything _else_. She’d ruined his communications terminal when he’d called Kim’s house and Shego had said she'd have Kim call back.

 

Fortunately, Wade actually spoke a little Japanese. What self respecting geek didn’t?

 

_ “Yori-san… Please calm yourself. Why are you so angry at Kim-chan? She is your friend.” _

 

Yori seemed taken aback momentarily by Wade speaking to her in her native tongue, even with his horrible accent. She responded, also in Japanese. _“The dragon sorceress has stolen away Ron-sama’s heart with evil magic and soft words.”_

 

It took Wade a moment to process that, especially since Yori used a few words that he wasn’t familiar with, but he finally got the gist of it. _“Yori, I thought you were okay with Kim-sempai and Ron-san dating?”_

 

_“I lied, Wade-kun.”_ And Yori instantly switched from raving to sobbing. _“I was never approving of their relationship. Kim-chan demeans Ron at every turn and treats him as an inferior.”_

 

Wade shook his head and made the symbol for time-out, switching back to English because he couldn’t grasp that last exchange fully. “Ninomachi? I’m sorry, what is that Yori-san?”

 

“Ninomachi means inferior.”

 

Wade nodded. He had seen a little of the same from time to time, but he didn’t think it was nearly as bad as Yori made it out. She was almost acting like she was… drunk.

 

“That’s it! Drunk!”

 

Yori was startled by Wade’s outburst and looked up. “Drunk, Wade-kun?”

 

“Yori… I know it’s hard to understand, but you’re acting without inhibitions: Like a person does when they’re drunk.” Wade didn’t realize until after he’d said it that he’d taken his life into his hands with that statement.

 

“Wade-bozu… I am not hebereke.” She said it softly, as though chiding a child who did not understand.

 

Wade blew a breath, and decided to plead to her logical, disciplined side; the part of her who was still a ninja. “Yori-chan. Before you used your foot stone, would you have flown to America and would you have touched Ron in public when you are not ‘involved’?”

 

_“Of course I would have. I simply had not graduated from the coursework of my sensei.”_ She had again slipped back into Japanese, and Wade worked in his head for a moment, chewing on what she said.

 

_“Then why did you not come here sooner? Yori-chan, what you say does not make any sense.”_ Wade had to speak slowly, making sure to pick the correct words in the complex language. _“If that were the case, you would have come back with Ron-san when Hana defeated Yono and Kim-chan was turned to stone. Or you would have not left when you helped Kim to locate the scrolls and artifacts Monty Fiske was after.”_

 

Yori’s artificially onyx eyes narrowed and her voice hardened _, “I helped Kimberly-kohai because it was my honor to protect the Han…”_

 

_“And you left, saying that it was Kim-chan who was fated to be with Ron-san. Was it also your honor to lie?”_ Wade was picking up on some of the vagaries of Yori’s speech now. Her use of name-honorifics was helping, especially the way she would elevate Ron by calling him –sama or by using his name intimately with no honorific; and her use of them deride Kim by calling her –kohai or –chan.

 

Yori realized she was caught now. So she lied again. After all, it seemed to be the preferred tactic in America. And the sooner she could get back to Ron and keep him away from Kim-chan, the better _. “The story was told to you incorrectly. I said that Kim-kohai and Ron were fated to do great things… Apparently Kim-kohai’s Japanese is no better than yours.”_

 

Wade didn’t buy it for a second, because Kim’s Japanese was actually excellent. Sadly, he guessed that reasoning with Yori in her current state was no better than dealing with an actual drunk. He switched back to English and shook his head softly.

 

“Yori-san, Where is Master Sensei?”

 

“The old fool is still at Yamanoucchi.”

 

“Yeah, and would you call the man who saved you from the Yakuza an old fool before you started using your foot-stone?”

 

Yori’s obsidian eyes became slits as she shot out a hand and seized Wade by the throat. “How did you know that, Wade-bozu?” 

 

Again she hissed in Japanese and Wade’s eyes were wide with fear. Kim had told him about the hair-stick incident. He desperately didn’t want to be the first real casualty of Yori’s affliction. “Yori! Stop! Look at yourself, you’re strangling a little kid!”

 

Her eyes widened after a moment, and she yelped, dropping Wade back into his chair and looking at her still-clawed hand. “Gomen Nasai Wade-bozu! I am Sorry! I am so sorry!”

 

Wade rubbed his throat, thankful that he seemed to have at least gotten through a little. Still, he doubted she would restrain herself fast enough to prevent injury if he didn’t watch his words much more carefully. “Yori. Its okay. Please, sit down. I’ll go get us some pocky.”

 

It was a rare treat for Yori to get sweets, so she did sit back into the other chair and waited. She could go see Ron-sama after candy.

 

Wade returned a few minutes later, and hoped that the all-mighty power of otaku snacks could over-power Drak-co’s mind-altering substances. He also hoped he could undo this madness eventually.  

 

\-----

 

Bonnie sighed and settled in at her vanity, tugging out her evening regime of beauty care products, preparing to remove her school makeup and let her bronze skin breath for a few minutes before applying her evening makeup so she could meet up with…

 

“I still can’t freaking believe I said that out loud… Possible must really be getting to me.” Bonnie groaned audibly and rubbed her forehead softly. How in the heck had Kim weaseled that admission out of her?

 

At least she’d managed to dodge the rest of the coming questions when Kim’s doofus boyfriend had up and disappeared with that slut he was apparently keeping on the side. It was a good distraction to keep Kim off of her for a little while… Now she could go and relieve some tension with her forbidden little boy toy, who was always happy to pay attention to her.

 

She pulled out her usual group of products, and eyed this new stuff… “Doctor D’s Miraculous Makeup Pad… Guaranteed to reveal the real you. Well Doctor D… Here’s to hoping you can get this eye shadow off with all the sweat from practice gluing it on…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Sempai – name suffix for a superior or an upper-classman in school  
> -Kohai – name suffix indicating a lower-classman or an underling   
> -Bozu – name suffix usually used to address someone seen as a little brother or a silly little boy.  
> -Sama – name suffix to convey great respect.   
> -_____ - traditionally saying someone’s name without a suffix conveys intimacy and familiarity, and is reserved for family members and very close friends.   
> Hebereke – Drunk


	11. “Monologues and Diatribes”

 

There was a lot of internal monologing going on in the Possible livingroom that evening, and hence a lot of heavy silence. Shego and Kim sat on the couch, one holding a book, the other holding two kimmunicators, and both trying to concentrate on their own tasks to keep themselves distracted, though neither would admit that if pressed.

 

Ron, meanwhile, sat in the Lay-Z-boy and was entirely occupied by his own concerns. These concerns included a Japanese exchange student who seemed to like to grope him, and how he liked it in return. They also included his twiddling thumbs to a certain extent, since the TV remote control seemed to have mysteriously melted sometime during the day.

 

 _‘Where the heck is Wade? Why can’t I get a hold of him? Shego said he just called a few minutes ago. Then again, Shego lies all the time. But why would she lie about this? Better question, why is she sniffing the lunabat and reading that book, and why can’t I stop staring at her mouth? And Ron? Where the heck was he all afternoon? And why is there perfume and lipstick on his collar if he was kidnapped? Better question, why doesn’t that upset me as much as it really should?’_ This was Kim’s rapid-fire mental discourse. As usual, her mind worked a mile-a-minute.

 

Normally this was a good thing, because it was what gave her her ‘super-powers.’ Or what Ron and Wade called her ‘essential kimness,’ her ability to analyze a situation at almost inhuman speeds and make snap-decisions with good outcomes. Today, however, she was all questions and no answers it seemed.

 

_‘Okay okay, So maybe Yori’s problems made her attack Ron. That’s fine. He can handle it. He’s had girls fawning all over him before after all. Like Tara at Camp Wanaweep last spring… And Bonnie when Ron got his Naco check… He usually doesn’t even realize it’s going on till it’s too late for him to do anything about it, right? RIGHT? Hey, why is Shego looking at me like that over the top of her book?”_

 

Shego was indeed sitting with the lunabat “Celeste” resting beneath her chin, and was softly breathing against it as she continued to read “Pearl.” Well, tried to read anyway. The words were entering her eyes as they scanned the page, but that was all the deeper they penetrated. She kept looking up at the blonde cheerleader subtly every few minutes.

 

 _‘I can’t believe she got me a gift. Who the hell is Kim Possible to buy a confirmed hard-ass like me a present? Well she’s a fucking goody-two-shoes, that’s who. Okay, so she got me a stupid little cuddlebunny- erm buddy-  cause she thought it was cute. Yeah, I guess it is, and it IS in my colors… So I guess that’s all right. I’ll just take it with me when I break out of here.’_ Shego looked over the top of the mostly-forgotten book and watched the bleach-blonde frustratedly trying to work both of her communications devices. She thought the frustrated little pout gracing Kim’s lips was distracting, and she determinedly set her mind against just why that was. Instead she chose to focus on the absurdity of the situation.

 

_‘Why the hell doesn’t she just use a phone like a normal person? You don’t think that the blonde hair is starting to get to her? I mean, she was always hella-smart… maybe Drak’s shampoo has something going for it other than mind control? Oh… blonde. Why the heck was she so freaked about turning blonde anyways? Not that having every hair on your body turned a different color overnight isn’t freaky, but still? Princess way over-reacted.’_

 

Shego stopped herself short of considering if _every_ hair on Kim’s body really was blonde. Well, she told her mind that she had stopped herself. A more prurient aspect of her brain continued on with that train of thought, a little below her conscious radar for the moment. Eventually it would give her an impure little tingle at an inopportune time, but for the moment it stayed under-cover.

 

If Shego was trying to suppress her urges, then Ron was tackling his head-on inside of his own skull. Of course, Ron, being a teenage boy, could only think with one part of his anatomy at a time. Although he was usually deeper than most gave him credit for, for the moment blood flow was not dedicated to the higher parts of his brain all that well.

 

 _‘Yori sure is messed up with this stuff. Man, those black eyes are pretty though… Is that weird? I mean, Obsidian eyes being pretty? The way she grabs me though, and that kiss she gave me when I left Wade’s! Man, Kim never kisses me like that. Oh man, that’s so Diablo. Kim loves me and I love Kim. Yori just gets me all happy in my cargo’s is all. Okay… Okay… so I don’t fantasize about Kim like I used to before we were dating… but she’s still totally badical and I’m mega-lucky to have her. She’s hot, she’s smart, she’s popular, and she actually cares about me. So why doesn’t she get me going like Yori?’_ Ron sighed and sunk his face in his hands. He didn’t like where his half-logic was taking him. He tried to change course.

 

_‘Okay okay… Um, if Yori is messed up like she is, maybe Wade can use it to figure out how to cure them all? I should ask Shego if she heard anything at Drakken’s lab that might tell us how to do that; or at least if she has any idea how long this stuff is supposed to last. The old LRO shampoo only worked for a few minutes after it was applied, right? I mean, the obey command lasted a long time, but you could only make suggestions while the person’s head was still wet if I remember right.’_

 

Meanwhile, outside of everyone’s heads, Kim and Shego seemed to be on an eerie mental sync at the moment; because just as Kim threw both kimmunicators down in frustration, Shego was handing her the house’s cordless land-line. “Here… Mr. Bell would like a word with you.”

 

“Mr. Bell?” Kim looked at the taller woman in frustrated confusion.

 

“Yeah, as in Alexander Graham? The guy who invented these?” the green merc’s trademark smirk and glint came back to her and she tapped the phone against Kim’s hand. “He wants to know why you don’t just dial turbo-nerd’s house.”

 

“Oh!” Kim blushed and sighed at her own hard-headedness. She took it, and then got up off the couch, going in search of a phone book, since she actually didn’t know Wade’s traditional phone number. “Man… such a dork today… I can’t think straight!”

 

“That’s okay, I hear it’s a common complaint among the platinum set.”

 

Kim gave her a sour, and if Shego was any judge, slightly hurt look. Sheshona bit her lip softly and sighed. Why was the cheerleader so sensitive about it? Loathed as she was to admit it, the malachite mercenary was just going to have to ask her temporary partner.

 

In the kitchen, Kim was wondering the same thing as she drug out the old fashioned paper phone-book. Why did it feel like a knife in the gut every time someone asked her about her newly altered locks? Sure this was only Tuesday and it had happened Saturday, but still… it shouldn’t be such a sore spot. As she stood up though, she looked into the faces of her family, via the large family portrait visible through the kitchen door hanging over the mantle. All of them, Kim included, were geniuses; and none were blonde.

 

She sighed heavily and looked over at Ron, who was holding his head and muttering to himself. He wasn’t stupid… He wasn’t a genius, but he was a pretty deep and thoughtful guy. Then again, he was silly and completely lacked drive and seriousness. Just like Josh Mankey, Brick Flagg, Tara King, Bonnie’s older sister Connie. _‘Geeze, can I really be this shallow under all of it?’_

 

“Kimmie-cub… you seem perplexed. What’s the matter?”

 

Kim almost leapt out of her skin, and succeeded in cracking her head on the spice rack as she stood fully. “Gah! Jeeze dad! You startled me!”

 

James Possible had just come in the back door via the garage, and was looking concernedly at his daughter as he took off his jacket and lab coat.

 

“Daddy, would you say I’m shallow?” She looked at him with a mixture of earnest contemplation and concern.

 

“Oh of course not hun. Why on earth would you even think such a thing?” He reached over and patted her shoulder in a fatherly manner.

 

“It’s just that… well… ever since I got this…” She tugged at a strand of corn-silk and blew a frustrated breath, “I’ve been feeling… well… I dunno what, but it’s just not right.”

 

“Oh bubblebutt, I don’t think it’s anything big. You know, a lot of women, and even some men these days take their hair color pretty seriously. The media puts a lot of emphasis on it, and I’m sure you’re picking up some of that… Just give yourself a little time till we can put you back the way you were. Or you until you can get used to this new look.” Kim’s mom, who had snuck in quietly sometime ago, smiled softly and shook her head as she spoke.

 

“Bubblebutt!? Oh god… Oh man that’s rich! I have to write that one down! I’d forgotten your mommy called you that!” Shego just happened to come to be leaning against the door-frame that separated the kitchen from the living room, and she was trying not to completely bust a gut as Kim turned three different shades of red at being caught out.

 

“Yeah… Yeah? Like you have room to talk, Elsbeth!” Kim retorted with the first rejoinder that came to her mind, pointing a playfully accusatory finger at the taller woman.

 

Apparently it worked as Shego’s cheeks changed to match the embarrassed shade of Kim’s and she stuttered at the revelation of her hideous middle name. She sputtered, trying to come up with another nickname and dropping her lunabat to her side. After a long, flustered moment, the best she could come up with was, “Yeah… well you say that now Bubblebutt! Just you wait!”

 

Kim’s parents exchanged a glance at the down-right pleasant banter, with matching arched brows.

 

The homey little scene was interrupted as Ron came up behind Shego, a slightly shocked look on his face.

 

“Um KP, Dr’s P, erm… Shego… You have a guest.”

 

\-----

 

Drakken clapped his black-latex clad hands together gleefully as he watched his plot continue to unfold. All ready word had leaked onto the villain-web that Global Justice seemed to have been incapacitated. Amazing how fast an “unsubstantiated rumor” from an “anonymous source” could be capitalized on by the more desperate of the criminal element.

 

His mood was soaring at the way his machinations were playing out so well. Grinning in a positively silly manner, he pressed his intercom button on the massive terminal and waited for the response.

 

“Jenkins… Bring me some cocomoo… Things are going swimmingly and I feel another idea coming on!”

 

“Sorry sir, Jenkins transferred to another temp assignment. I’m Stanislawsz.” came the response after a moment.

 

Feeling a little non-plussed at this high turn-over rate among his henchmen, Drakken sighed and nodded at the speaker. “Fine fine Stani-  whoever! Bring me my cocomoo!”

 

“Your what sir?”

 

“Nrrrrrrgh… My Hot Chocolate Milk!” Drakken slapped the end-transmission button irritably with his small hands and grumbled, returning to his seat at the work bench. Then he pulled up a transaction list from Lair-Away Industries, one of his investments, and read through it with idle curiosity.

 

It was a list of rentals from his investment. And one name peaked his interest. “Ho-ho… Sheshona is back in Middleton is she? Hmmmm, things could be working out far better than I planned. Who could have figured she would run to that blasted girl not once, but twice.”

 

Drakken clapped his gloved hands together yet again and grinned. If the two of them were once again together, he might just have the chance to see the full effects of two of the “products” after all. He could determine why the shampoo had not functioned as he calculated. It would be his opportunity to streamline his plans further.

 

Then he snorted derisively, remembering Shego’s parting words to him. “Respect… Ha! She was supposed to respect me… Her _employer_ , the head of her _evil family_ , the one who took her in when no one would have an _ex-hero_ ; not her arch foe and personal nemesis.”

 

Grumbling to himself, his mood changed just like that. He went from the triumphal high of watching video of a Global Justice agent whose hair was falling out as he threw a tantrum at the failure of his stop-watch, to a self-loathing low of how his once trusted assistant had more emotion for a teenage girl than for him.

 

This was actually a fairly common occurrence for the cerulean skinned scientist. No one seemed to be able to tell him how he could go through such polar shifts of emotion. Then again… Drakken never put together that mad scientists _were_ mad precisely because the villainy community didn’t suffer from an over-abundance of quality mental health care.

 

In his opinion, his problem had its upside. Some of his greatest near-triumphs had come when one of these titanic upswings in mood coincided with an inspiration or breakthrough, giving him the unbridled confidence to work through setbacks and difficulties. He failed to associate the mood downturns with his abandoning of projects. Drew also didn’t realize that this might just be what caused him to get bored and over-look obvious flaws in his plans when he’d become over-stimulated and over-excited about an upcoming plot. 

 

A trained therapist would have looked at Drew Lipsky’s personal history, his lack of proper emotional growth, and his general instability, and pointed to his being a classic fast cycle bi-polar case with obsessive compulsive undertones as a coping mechanism. The problem was Drew Lipsky had never been to a trained therapist. Prison Psychiatrists merely labeled him as psychotic, incurable, and generally mad, and stuffed him into prison cells. It was a long term pattern that went all the way back to his dropping out of college in the early eighties, and being told that he was “just a whiney person” for the way he over-reacted to having his Bebe 1.0 idea ridiculed.

 

In truth, he behaved like many of History’s great geniuses; with triumphs that coincidentally aligned with his good days, and self-destructive behaviors that coincided with his bad times. Hemingway had had much the same problem, if Drakken could be bothered to learn about the writer. Perhaps if someone had taken the time to interview him properly and get him on some therapeutic medication, Dr. Drakken never would have emerged.

 

Drakken’s self-loathing depression over Shego’s betrayal began to mutate into anger over her absence and the way that limited his options to these contract henchmen who had no loyalty to him. How dare she leave him when he was on the cusp of his greatest triumph in villainy? Was it his fault that he needed a test subject for one of the ‘products,’ and she just happened to be handy?

 

“Of course not! My enthusiasm for this latest creation should be lauded. It’s perfectly normal to want to test something like that as soon as possible! She should have felt honored for her inclusion in this success!” the blue skinned man snorted in disdain at her entirely improper reaction. Well, he would show her, just as he was going to show everyone who had insulted and ridiculed him over the decades!

 

His already crashing mood was dealt another blow a few moments later when a distributor called him and informed him that Smarty Mart Corporation was pulling his products off their shelves. Further disappointment came when Stanislawsz called on the intercom to let him know they were out of “Moo-Juice” brand cocoa powder for his cocomoo.

 

\-----

 

The phone and phonebook dropped from Kim’s hands as she saw the guest Ron had announced. It wasn’t so much the identity of the person that socked Kim, as what she looked like. Forgotten were her confused thoughts over Sheshona’s furtive glances, Ron’s suspicious behavior, and her own embarrassment and self-loathing. These were replaced with frustration over the worsening Drak-co situation, and shock at what had happened to the girl before her.

 

As Ron excused himself with a cough and went to make a very important phone call, Kim and Shego were left with Bonnie Rockwaller and her Drakken-induced affliction. Her face was streaked with white, with only a few spots of her normal pigment visible. At first it looked like she had lost a fight with a cake of clown makeup. But as Shego, who was still leaning against the doorway, her laughter rapidly evaporating, looked closer, she saw that the white streaks were not painted on; they were in fact bleached out.

 

If the mercenary was shocked at the girl’s cosmetic appearance, the cheerleader was shocked at the expression Bonnie wore. Bonnie’s streaked face was a mask of fear and panic. Kim wondered just what the effects of this Drak-co product were, though she had to admit, if she found her skin marked up like this, she probably would have panicked even worse than she had when she found her hair bleached.

 

“Bonnie? Dear? What’s the matter? What’s happened?” Kim’s mother broke the shocked silence as she stepped through the kitchen and started examining the girl’s blanched face carefully.

 

“I… I don’t know!!!!” She wailed.


	12. Threes

Bonnie obviously didn’t recognize Shego, so the mercenary quietly excused herself from her post at the kitchen door and headed back to the living room, where Ron seemed to have admitted more “guests.” This time, it was Wade and some Japanese chick she didn’t recognize, who was wearing Kim's old style mission outfit, and wearing it well enough to distract Ron.

 

Shego chuckled slightly as she watched the blonde boy try to deny and hide the arousal the Japanese woman was inspiring in him as she sucked on what Shego identified as strawberry pocky. After a bit of watching Ron try to disguise his tent and dissuade his admirer, the thief got bored and turned her attention to the plump black kid.

 

“Hey Nerdlinger… Kimmie was trying to get ahold of you, but her little walky-talky wasn’t working.”

 

Wade brushed off the nickname. In fact, unbeknownst to Shego, he had actually adopted it as one of his net handles some time ago after she had first said it. He did nod irritably though after a moment and motioned to the Japanese vixen who was now sitting in Ron’s lap. “Yeah… Yori-chan took it upon herself to realign my comm system.”

 

Shego arched her newly brunette brow slightly and studied the girl a bit more closely at that admission. She noted that the way Yori wore Kim’s mission gear made her look like one hard core cookie, given that her abs look sculpted from alabaster, as did her exposed forearms. “She did, did she? Now why would she go and do a thing like that? And why is she wearing Kitten’s old gear?”

 

Taking Shego aside and a little out of Yori and Ron’s earshot, Wade shook his head and sighed. “She has some… issues… with Ron dating Kim; but that outfit is at least a little more functional than the evening gown she was wearing earlier. Oh, and any mention of Kim sets her off since she’s been affected by Drak-Co stuff.”

 

“So why the fuck did you bring her here? Trying to start the mother of all cat fights?” Shego gave the fourteen year old an incredulous look that questioned his status as ‘genius.’

 

“Oh, I should leave her in my lab with all that expensive, _dangerous_ equipment and no impulse control?” He shot her the same look, or his version thereof. “Besides… she listens to Ron no matter what, it seems.”

 

Shego smirked and flicked her thumb at the pair. “Yeah… and apparently parts of him listen to her pretty well as well. I wonder what Kimmie thinks about his having a raging hard-on for the little lotus?”

 

Wade looked a little uncomfortable for a moment, but finally shrugged, “Can you blame the guy? Heck, I’d bet you’d be a little sticky too if she was in your lap doing things to you and whispering those sorts of things in your ear.”

 

Taken a bit aback at the computer nerd’s blunt assessment, Sheshona blinked in mild shock at his assertions about her sexuality. “Erm… yeah. The body does betray us some times doesn’t it? But I don’t want to be around when Bubblebutt’s temper erupts over this.”

 

It was Wade’s turn to blink as he looked up at the once-green woman, “Bubblebutt? Oooooohkay... Anyway, we’ve got more problems. Global Justice got hit with “product.” Dr. Director is requesting Kim’s help ASAP.”

 

Shesona was momentarily derailed when what she had called Kim was presented to her. For some reason that particular nickname made her feel… different… than anything else she called the teen titan on a daily basis. Still, Wade’s continuation drew her back to reality before she could further analyze the sensation, and she sighed.

 

“Just fucking wonderful. We also need to haul ass to Drakken’s lair in the Caribbean and find antidotes, notes, and generally kick his ass.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and gritted her teeth gently. “Can’t very easily do both, now can we?”

 

“Maybe we, or rather you, can.” Wade was scratching his chin as he pondered. “There’s four of you, for the moment at least. Two of you could go to Drakken’s lair, and two of you could go to GJ.”

 

“Oh yeah… Like those two could get much done at GJ aside from dry humping, followed by wet humping, followed by I-don’t-even-want-to-know-what humping.” She again thumbed at the pair in the chair, still trying to force her burgeoning headache away.

 

“Yeah, and like you and Kim could be trusted not to kill each other away from the prying eyes of civilized society. No, how about you and Ron go to Drakken’s lair, while Kim and Yori-,”

 

“Kill each other just like you accused me of wanting to do?”

 

“Yeah… bad idea, huh? Okay, you and Yori can go to GJ while Kim and Ron-,”

 

“Watch me get arrested by the few functioning Global Justice Agents who want a notch in their belts? Wanted felon here, remember?”

 

Now Wade was pinching his nose and sighing as well. “Riiiiiiight. We need Kim; she’s the team leader… and the best at planning.”

 

Shego was slightly forced to agree, despite her desire and best efforts to do otherwise. Kimmie’s strength was crisis management, and that was exactly what this was. She was about to go and fetch the blonde thorn in her side when Wade growled noticeably.

 

“Darn it. Everything will have to wait till morning anyways, I think. With my comm system down, I can’t arrange rides to GJ _or_ Drakken’s lair.

 

“We could go commercial you know…” Shego actually pointed out in what, surprisingly to both parties, was actually a helpful tone.

 

“Thought of that,” Wade said after the momentary shock wore off, “But the earliest flight for the Caribbean doesn’t leave till 8 tomorrow morning. And as for Global… Let’s just say they’re not exactly on commercial trade routes.”

 

“Damn. You can’t just call the people Kitten has favours owed for a lift?”

 

Shaking his head a bit, Wade shrugged. “Well, firstly; most of their contact info is in the computer Yori totaled. Secondly; even if it wasn’t, I’d need the computer to map out the best order of favours to call in and use that to generate a list of people to contact. So the short answer is no.”

 

“That wasn’t such a short answer nerdlinger,” Sheshona muttered as she pinched the bridge of her nose a bit tighter in frustration. “So we’re stuck like this for at least another night? Blondie, the Mediterranean thief, and the drunk ninja? Oh, and whatever that cheerleader chick turned in to.”

 

“Erm… well… about being stuck like that…” The dark-skinned boy began to shift uncomfortably, and Shego felt her heart sink as she heard the mother of all bad news coming in his wishy-washy words.

 

“What. About. That?” she growled in a dangerous tone as depression turned quickly to frustration, and then to rage.

 

\-----

 

On the other side of the living room, Ron was trying to ignore his rebellious libido and the lithe, powerful woman who was grinding against it to the best of her ability. She giggled with him and repeatedly thwarted his attempts to get her to behave. He couldn’t bring himself to be harsh with her, because what she was doing really wasn’t her fault. Unfortunately, he was beginning to feel that being harsh with Yori was the only way to get her to stop…

 

“Hey!” Ron would have rocketed out of the chair they were in if she wasn’t sitting in his lap. Sitting was stretching the term a bit. Yori was actually sitting half across the arms of the chair, which freed his lap to be the victim of her hand; which it had, which led to the exclamation.

 

Victim? Well, Ron’s anatomy hardly felt victimized at the moment. His sudden shocked outburst came from the sudden urgent message that ran from his lap to his brain. While he’d been trying to work up the will to firmly tell Yori to stop what she was doing, she had finally succeeded in slipping her hand down inside of his cargos.

 

Feeling a warm and very willing hand caressing his intimate parts momentarily shorted out Ron’s brain in a way nothing else in his life ever had. So disabled were his higher functions that he couldn’t even react to the caress with a proper moan and shudder. This was the first time he had ever been touched in a sexual manner, other than by himself, and the normally skittish Ron had simply gone out to lunch at the over-loading of his mind by his body.

 

Finally, however, Rufus, who had been disturbed by the presence of something _else_ down Ron’s pants, peeked out to see what was going on. Seeing Yori’s wrist disappearing into Ron’s waistband, Rufus understood that bad things were happening and looked up to see Ron in a blank-faced state. A quick kick in his side by the rodent’s foot did the trick and elicited Ron’s exclamation.

 

The little sensation of Rufus’s claws snapped Ron back to reality, and he managed to bite back the moan threatening at the back of his throat. Yori’s hand wasn’t exactly expert in sensual caress, but that hardly mattered to the virgin boy or his anatomy. Looking around like a hunted man, which he would definitely be should Kim see this, Ron quickly extricated Yori’s eager hand and did his best to zip up.

 

“Yori!” Ron managed after a moment of willing blood back to his brain, “What the heck are you doing?! You can’t do… _that_ … erm… It’s-,”

 

Obviously, Ron’s body, which still acutely ached for the presence of the Ninja’s hand, was preventing his brain from producing a reason _why_ Yori couldn’t continue doing what she had just been doing, and more.

 

Giving him a look that must be the spurned lover’s equivalent of the puppy dog pout, Yori immediately reached for his fly again as she leaned in to him. “Did you not like it Ron-sama? Was I doing it incorrectly? I thought that all American boys liked to have their-,”

 

Covering her mouth with his hand quickly, Ron blushed intently and sighed, stopping her saying anything else, less someone be listening; especially a redheaded Oni that masqueraded as his currently blonde girlfriend. Finally he managed to come up with something he thought was an appropriate response. “Because only my girlfriend is allowed to do that.”

 

Ron’s words were immediately turned back on him with the precision only a ninja could have managed, “But she has not been doing that, has she? Little Ron-sama has been neglected by that dragon woman and her selfish ways. You and he should be properly attended to as-,”

 

Groaning at the devious truth in Yori’s words, Ron again covered her mouth before she could continue. He felt fortunate that she had at least given up the habit of licking his palm as she’d done at Wade’s a few times when he’d had to stop her effusive proclamations of love, lust, and devotion.

 

Honestly, Ron wasn’t sure which made him more uncomfortable or uncertain; her sexual advances and molestations, or her passionate declarations of love and devotion to him. Or maybe it was those growing parts of him (no pun intended) that questioned why she so easily and willingly made such declarations and advances when Kim was content with chaste kisses and the occasional “This is why I keep you around” line.

 

Again, it was Rufus responsibility to drag his human back to reality. The hairless rodent had insinuated himself between Yori and Ron, making sure her hand could not get at the boy’s lap again. He kicked Ron in the tummy and chattered irritably until his master came around.

 

“Thanks little buddy. Look Yori… Kim and I are together, okay?” He studied her obsidian stained eyes and sighed deeply, trying to will understanding to her through the piercing look, “I know you’re not yourself right now, but you can’t do things and say stuff like that.”

 

Ron had expected a hurt, crestfallen look from his ninja friend and confidant. Instead his pleading entreaty was greeted with a look of pure malice. The blonde boy felt the ninja tense in his grasp as her already black eyes darkened.

 

“That Sorceress is unworthy of the Tai Sheng Pek Kwar Sensei! She does not attend to your needs as a proper beloved should. I will remove her from your life so that we may be together!”

 

Even if Ron hadn’t been suffering from a very painful erection, he could not have stood up quickly enough to prevent Yori from vaulting from his lap and darting towards the kitchen with murder in her onyx eyes. All he could do was call out a warning and look to Wade and Shego, pleading for help with his panicked expression.

 

\-----

 

They say trouble comes in threes. The third trouble was in the kitchen, where Kim and both Doctors Possible were looking over Bonnie Rockwaller. The girl’s face was badly bleached in broad streachs, her normally honey-toned flesh taking on a clownish appearance.

 

Kim learned why a moment later, and it made sense. The almost perfect coverage of her face with blanched skin matched up with the way a girl would remove her makeup with a pad or cloth; and Bonnie was nothing if not thorough with anything involving her appearance.

 

Taking a deep breath and sighing, Kim ran a hand through her flaxen locks and studied Bonnie’s face yet again. “Okay… so you used this new makeup pad, and it tingled? Tell me, have you had any unusual emotions or behaviors yet?”

 

 _‘Aside from boinking Larry Possible?’_ She went on mentally, shaking her head more and looking at the container of makeup pads in question.

 

“Duh… I told you that like three times already… no. Nothing unusual; except for my streaky face, and that weird makeup pad that’s named after your freaky blue nemesis. God, you aren’t involved with him or something, are you?” Bonnie grumbled and crossed her arms over her chest and starting to sound far more irritated than scared.

 

Kim, whose irritation level was already high given all the weirdness of the last few days, snapped back at the abrasive tone she was greeted with, “Is this the first time you’ve used this? Cause I’d say covering up that you’re sleeping with my cousin is pretty unusual behavior for the food chain queen!” After a moment, the substance of Bonnie’s words caught up with the tone, “And Ewww! No! I am so far from being involved with Drakken that it’s… really far!”

 

If it was at all possible for Bonnie to pale with her joker-like skin, she did. It didn’t help her disturbance at being outted yet again that both Possible parents stared at her in open shock. After a moment, “Gah! Will you stop doing that?! Yes, it’s the first time I ever used it. It was on sale and they were out of my regular stuff, okay?!”

 

“Tell me why you came here.” It wasn’t a request, and even if Kim hadn’t been accidentally imbued with suggestive powers, the harsh look in her eyes would have had Bonnie spilling her guts.

 

“I went to Larry’s place in a panic. I was supposed to see him tonight anyways. He took a look at the makeup pads and said it was the same company that made the shampoo last year that you were all over on that TV show cause of their sponsorship deals.”

 

“My cousin the trivia master…” Kim groaned and tugged at her platinum strands in irritation. Then a gleam came to the head cheerleader’s fern-colored eyes. She could at least use her new-found lather-rinse-obey powers to get some intel out of the brunette. “Tell me why you’re with Lawrence, won’t you please Bonnie?”

 

Anne, who knew about Kim’s power to command others, tried to step forward and prevent Bonnie from responding, but James rested a hand on her shoulder. When she looked at him, she could tell that he wanted to hear more about this, since he was painfully aware how his nebbish nephew was absolutely not in the same league as the Rockwaller girl.

 

Still, Mrs. Doctor Possible gave her daughter a look that said this abuse of her power _would_ be discussed later.

 

Young Miss Rockwaller, who was unaware of the compelling nature of Kim’s question, began to spill her reasoning. “Your cousin is mega sweet Kim. He listens to me; and not because I’m a cheerleader, or at the top of the food chain, or rich or hot. He likes the things I have to say and the way I try to pay attention to his nerdy obsessions. God it sucks doing that, and I tell him that, but he’s worth the effort, and he just smiles and understands that it’s not my thing.”

 

She blushed slightly, which was a disturbing brilliant pink on her white cheeks, before continuing. “And in bed… GAWD! I thought Brick was endowed! And the things he does with his tongue Kim! It’s just-,”

 

“EWWWWWWW!!!!!! Shut up!!!” Kim clapped her hands to her ears. Knowing the vagaries was one thing, but for Bonnie to actually tell her about her insecure cousin’s prowess between the sheets was enough to turn Kim’s stomach.

 

Per Kim’s emphatic command, Bonnie’s mouth slammed shut even as she was continuing. After a moment, she blinked confusedly, and then eyed Kim, her cold aqua orbs filled with suspicion.

 

After a moment Kim sighed and plunged on with her interrogation. “Tell me this Bonnie… If he’s so important to you, why won’t you admit it to people? Why hide him like he was a ferociously freaky mole?”

 

Again, the white-faced socialite spilled before she realized it. “Because I’m scared. I’m scared people will hate me for being in love with a geek! Okay?!”

 

After she’d finished, she growled softly and eyed her nemesis. “Why the hell do I keep saying those secret things around you Possible? It’s not normal… do you have some mutant super power or something!? Like Tempestua the Seductress and her voice of persuasion?”

 

“Tempest- Oh My God you do love him!” Kim looked up in shock. She had assumed that this was another instance of truth being in the eye of the beholder; that Bonnie was just in it for the sex and the praise. Yet, if she, Bonnie Rockwaller, confirmed purveyor of cool, could memorize one of Larry’s favorite comic-book vixens, it must run deeper than that.

 

While Kim was trying to recover from her Shock, Anne decided that enough was too much, and rested her hand on Bonnie’s shoulder. “Kim’s developed a bit of a knack for… convincing people to do what she wants, dear.” She looked down into Bonnie’s stark face and smiled gently. “But you do love Larry, don’t you? And you really are frightened of him?”

 

“Mmmhmm.” Was all she could responde as she watched her redhead-cum-blonde foe archly.

 

With Rockwaller’s confirmation of her feelings, a few things in Kim’s mind suddenly clicked in to place, and she got up, wandering over to her father. She beckoned him to a corner, and whispered in his ear, “Daddy, I need for you to ask Bonnie something I know she’ll lie to. I need to know if she can lie or not, but if I ask her, I don’t know if it’s cause she can’t lie, or she has to do what I say.”

 

Mr. Dr. Possible gave his doctor a confused look, but shrugged and nodded, understanding her logic about as well as anyone could. “Okay Kimmie-cub… what do you want me to ask?”

 

After a moment, Kim settled back into her chair and James tried his best to act natural.

 

“Ahem… Excuse me, Bonnie… but I have a question about what you and Kimmie do at school. Is it true that you’re always at the top of the pyramid?”

 

Anne gave her husband and daughter dirty looks as Bonnie began.

 

“Oh, no. Kim’s the only one who jumps all the way to the top of the pyramid. I usually have to be in the second of third row.”

 

Kim grinned softly and nodded. She was about to start in again when there came a shout from the living room.

 

“Kim!!! LOOK OUT!”


	13. “Catfights, Dogfights, and Exposition”

“Kim!!! LOOK OUT!”

 

Without that warning, Kim would be unconscious, her face smashed into the kitchen table and blood drooling from her shattered nose. As it was, she cranked her head back just in time for a black and khaki colored blur to whip by her face, bolt off the back wall of the kitchen, and come at her once more.

 

By now Kim’s combat skills had kicked in and the surprise had worn off. All of two seconds had elapsed, if that. She leapt to her feet, knocking the chair out from behind herself and struck a stance. As she did, the adrenaline kicked in and time dilation began; the world slowing around Kim Possible as it often did when she fought.

 

Yori was airborne, bounding at the blonde focus of her ire and reaching for her throat. Now; she didn’t actually want to kill Kim, the blonde hadn’t dishonored herself nearly as badly as Fukushima. No, she just wanted to _dissuade_ the former redhead from further insulting her heart’s desire with misplaced affections.

 

 If that meant breaking Kim’s limbs and/or neck so that she could not physically interfere, so be it; it seemed perfectly reasonable to her. When in America, do as the Americans did and attack your problem with obscenely overwhelming force, the ninja had decided a moment ago when Ron had again declared his fealty to this unworthy dragon woman.

 

 Yori hissed and cursed in her native tongue as she was dodged a second time, and altered her momentum into a back flip across the floor so that she could realign and reassess her strategy. Ron-sama certainly had to be difficult in his choice of a rival for her, didn’t he?

 

Kim’s second dodge was a lot more effective than her first, leaving her able to do more this time than merely rock backwards from the table. It gave her more breathing room to assess her surroundings. She wasn’t thrilled with what she found.

 

While larger than the average, the Possible’s kitchen was still pretty close quarters for this kind of fighting. Add to that that it was occupied by not only Kim and Yori, but also by Kim’s parents and Bonnie Rockwaller, and Kim felt very well hemmed in by her environment. She briefly wondered if Yori had actually taken this into consideration prior to her attack. She wouldn’t put it past the ninja, whose combat skills equaled or exceeded her own.

 

Speaking of the onyx-eyed Ninja, here she came again! Yori had yet to stop bouncing, having used the momentum of her backflip to bounce off yet another wall and catapult herself at Kim. Kim bent over backwards to avoid it, but resisted the urge to mule-kick the shinobi in the guts as she normally would have; the ceiling would just have bounced Yori back down at her in that case.

 

As Yori careered past, Kim broke out of her crab-walking stance and grabbed at the passing ankles, which coincidentally were wearing a pair of her old sneakers. This caused the attacker to be slowed down by virtue of Kim’s one-hundred-seventeen pound frame getting dragged behind her.

 

Kim grunted as her shoulders were almost jerked out of their sockets, so she was forced to let go. Still, she had slowed her foe down enough to prevent another bounce. She stood up, noting that her parents had scurried to a corner of the room, and that both Bonnie and her chair were lying in a shocked state on the floor.

 

Flipping to her feet, and turning about in her room survey, the blonde saw Ron, Shego, and Wade rushing to the kitchen door finally, “Guys… crowded enough in here ‘kay? Thanks much! Ooooomph!”

 

Since she was facing the kitchen door, Kim’s back was to Yori for a split second, and in that second the shinobi struck again, spin-kicking at her back.

 

Fortunately the kitchen was confined enough that the spin couldn’t develop truly spine-snapping speed, so it only succeeded in bruising Kim and knocking her aside.

 

Yori completed her spin, but her follow-through was stopped by the sudden impulse to gave lovingly at Ron; who was watching her, in her opinion at least, defeat her unworthy rival for his affections.

 

Kim returned the favour of distraction by bodily tackling the ninja into one of the cupboards that lined the wall and moving to grapple with her and prevent another round of bouncing off the walls.

 

Shego watched the exchange with an odd mixture of pride and trepidation. She couldn’t help but grin as Kim used one of Shego’s own moves on that uppity little ninja; and yet the idea of Kim being caught so off guard in such a tight space worried her in a way she was unfamiliar with. She grit her teeth and cheered on the blonde as best she could manage. “Get her Kim! Teach that little trollop who she’s messing with!”

 

The odd looks she earned from Wade and Ron silenced her a moment later. “What?!”

 

Ron shook his head in confusion and looked back into the kitchen, where Kim and Yori were trying to out-grapple each-other, their hands clenched together as the grunted and leaned back and forth, vying for dominance.

 

“That would be so cool…! If one of them wasn’t going to kill the other!” he wrung his hands and watched the titanic struggle as both girls shoved and twisted, each trying to break the other’s hold.

 

Shego shook her head at the stereotypically male statement and groaned. After a moment though, a thought occurred to her fighter’s mind, “Wait a minute, why doesn’t Kim just order her to stop?”

 

Ron looked up in confusion, torn away from the action by Sheshona’s odd statement. “Why would she do that?”

 

At this point, Wade had to step in as mediator. Shego and Kim’s parents knew about Kim’s power of suggestion. Ron knew about Yori’s impulse control issues. Only the dark-skinned boy knew about both.

 

“I’m not sure that would work Shego.”

 

“Why not turbo-nerd? Works on me well e-fucking-nough!”

 

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Kim heard the curse and groaned, panting through grit teeth, “Shego! Watch your language! My parents are in the room!”

 

Then she and Yori were rolling across the floor in their struggle before more could be said.

 

Shego’s brown eyes went wide when she heard Kim’s grumble and her tongue was leashed, “Awwwe Poop! Not again! Darn it bubblebutt!”

 

Kim suddenly blushed crimson at Shego’s words, her heart racing at the nickname. Yori took advantage of the distraction as any trained ninja would, and swung for the blonde’s jaw.

 

Lying on the ground beneath Yori as she was, Kim could do nothing to avoid the blow and her head was snapped sidewise, blood and saliva flying in an arc across the floor.

 

Shego yelped and covered her mouth, “Sorry!” turning to Wade, she looked a little concerned. This was an expression neither boy was used to seeing. “So, why can’t Kim just command Yori to stop?”

 

“As near as I can figure, it would be kinda like the immovable object meeting the irresistible force. Kim’s Commands would be the irresistible force, and Yori’s impulses towards Ron would be the immovable object. I think?”

 

“What commands?!” Ron yelped frustratedly, feeling utterly lost as his girlfriend fended off his… what was Yori at this point exactly?

 

Before the computer boy could respond, Shego filled in the details in her usual blunt fashion, “The Lather Rinse Obey shampoo backfired. Instead of being mind controlled, Kimmie can control other people. Darn her!”

 

Ron boggled at this revelation, but Wade expanded on it before he could muster any further questions, “I think it’s worse than that, Shego. The LRO shampoo seems to be the basis for all the new Drak-co products. It also seems to be affecting her-,”

 

Wade was cut off when Yori went spiraling through the air between them and into the livingroom, followed quickly by an enraged Kim. “Get back here you Glorified Geisha! I’m not done with you yet!”

 

“- temper and concentration…” Wade sighed after a moment, looking towards the evolving battle.

 

“Hey, that sounded like something Shego would…” Ron trailed off.

 

Suddenly both boys’ eyes settled on the tall woman, whose attention was entirely, and raptly, on the battle before them. They both smacked their foreheads softly in dawning realization and groaned. Obviously the two women had been spending too much time around each other this week.

 

Ignorant of their stares, Sheshona turned back to Wade. “So explain again why Kim can’t just order that lotus babe to stop?”

 

Shaking off his stunned face, Wade shrugged, “Cause, Yori’s issue is impulse control… If Kim commanded her to, Yori would stop, for a second. Then she'd get another urge to attack Kim and it would start all over again.”

 

“Oh! And if Yori’s impulses keep her going, Kim would have to just keep commanding! That whole Irresistible/Immovable thing! You know, you’re a lot better at explanations that Doctor DORK-ken.” Shego nodded with dawning understanding.

 

“Look out Yori-san!”

 

Wade’s eyes swung to the living room, where Kim was about to clobber Yori with a table lamp. The ninja was just standing up from where she had landed, half-folded over the couch; and Kim was taking advantage of the disorientation.

 

Shego smacked Ron upside the back of the head, hard.

 

“Ow!”

 

“Aren’t you supposed to be rooting for… you know… _your girlfriend_?!” the mercenary growled with something that went beyond her normal irritation at Ron’s apparent waffling, and thumped the back of his head again for added emphasis.

 

Yori, stunned as she was, heard the warning and rolled out of the way before her skull could be thumped with the lamp. A broad grin spread across her lips. “Arrigato Ron!”

 

“Shut up Ron!” Kim growled as she discarded the lamp and back into her traditional fighting stance.

 

The ninja rolled fully off of the couch she was half-sprawled across, and smirked at her cheerleading foe. “The heat of battle reveals the truth of the heart, Kimberly-kohai. My beloved shows his true allegiance and your manipulations are lost.”

 

“Oh, why don’t you just shut up too?!” Kim spun a kick right at Yori’s mouth as she stood, and almost connected.

 

Continuing around with her momentum, she tried to bring her elbow into Yori’s side, and to sweep her feet from under her as well.

 

Yori lept up from the sweep, which she expected, but took the elbow in the side because she wasn’t expecting that. It took her a moment to will her mouth into motion against Kim’s command. “Ooof! Tricky tricky Kim-kohai. Ron has been teaching you I see!”

 

“Please, Ron? Teaching me?!” Kim snorted, back flipping out of Yori’s reach and shaking her blonde mane. Mentally, she made note of Yori’s resistance, and hoped it signaled that she might be getting rid of her ‘gift.’

 

Ron looked slightly deflated as Kim’s words echoed across the room. Wade felt for him, but his immediate concern was getting this stopped before Kim and Yori did real damage to one another.

 

“Wait a minute! Didn’t you just say Yori _always_ listens to Ron?!” Shego turned her eyes from the battle as Yori tried again to break Kim’s back with one of her vicious long-legged kicks. She turned to Ron, grabbing him by the shoulders. “Tell your little geisha to stop already!”

 

Ron tried to mumble something out, but then sighed and pointed at his mouth in frustration.

 

“Shucks!” Shego groaned and then turned her concerned eyes back to the fight at hand, “Hey Princess, you need to let Ron talk again!”

 

“I need to what?!” Kim ducked a ninja haymaker and snorted, swinging at Yori’s midsection, “Little busy here right now Elsbeth!”

 

Shego’s chest fluttered for a reason unknown, and she groaned at Kim’s combat tunnel-vision, “Order Ron to talk so he can call off his sword polisher!”

 

“His what?! She Better Not Be!” Kim growled menacingly, then yelped as she dodged something resembling a neck chop on steroids. “Oh fine! Speak up Ron!”

 

“Geeze, she hears that but not all the stuff about commanding Yori? Gee, thanks Shego!” Ron groaned.

 

Shego held up her hand, threatening a third bap, and Ron quickly amended, “Okay okay! Yori! Stop it right now!”

 

“But Ron-sama…” Yori grunted as she and Kim had again clenched hands, “I have almost bested her! Allow me to prove myself please!”

 

“As if…” Kim snorted irritably. She pressed harder and grunted with effort, and then delayed inspiration set in. “Hey Yori! Let go!”

 

“Okay! Eeeep!” Yori was forced, at least momentarily, to obey, and that was all Kim needed. She thrust Yori back and swung a hard kick and a punch at her, mimicking Shego’s close-in style again and sending the afflicted shinobi over the couch and out the front door.

 

After a moment of panting heavily and wiping sweat from her brow, Kim flicked her thumb towards the door irritably, “Maybe you should go check on her, Ron.”

 

Wincing at the harsh tone in her voice, Ron slunk past the blonde and out the door.

 

Sighing heavily and running slightly shaking hands through her hair, Kim made her way towards the kitchen once again. She found her shell-shocked parents and Bonnie trying to put things back together. Fortunately, little actual damage seemed to have been done to the house. She noted a few cracks in the drywall where Yori had been bounding about, and the one broken lamp she herself had grabbed up, but otherwise, nothing.

 

Even the front door had been, fortunately, open for some reason.

 

\-----

 

Later that evening, things had settled down a bit and Kim sat at the kitchen table with her mother, working over reheated brain-loaf and discussing her behavior.

 

Bonnie had left when Larry had come over to pick her up, much lamenting missing out on watching Kim in one of her fights. It was perhaps the one thing that made him nearly normal; he enjoyed his cousin’s escapades much like everyone else. He had moved closed to the white-faced bonnie and held her as they went for the door, further shocking the Possibles. The death-glare he had gotten from Mr. Doctor. Possible, however, had ensured he drove Bonnie straight home with no hanky panky; even though Bonnie was a little too shell-shocked to have participated in such.

 

Ron and Yori had never come back in after the ninja woman had been forcibly ejected, and Kim wasn’t exactly certain how she felt about that. Part of her felt a stab of jealousy and betrayal that her best friend since pre-K had ditched out on her with the Shinobi after their struggle. Yet another part of her was whispering something she couldn’t quite grasp yet. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to hear it, though maybe she didn’t… She just didn’t understand it yet.

 

Toying with her brainloaf slice, Kim sighed, half-listening to her mother and lost in her own thoughts. Then she was stung by the accusation in the older woman’s voice.

 

“I can’t _believe_ you used your new powers to interrogate poor Bonnie like that, Kimberly Anne! And in the state she was in?”

 

Kim was already on edge. It was Tuesday night, and Wade said there was virtually nothing that they could do until at least the morning. That would make it a full five days from the time she was attacked with the shampoo. Add to that Yori’s little tantrum earlier in the night, and her general ill-at-ease feelings over having the villainess Shego living in her guest-room, and Kim had had it. Her mother attacking her, in Kim's opinion at least, just pushed her the last few inches over the edge.

 

“What the hell mom?! You think I _want_ these damned ‘powers’? Look what they’ve made me do so far!” Kim grit her teeth and clenched her fist around her fork, “I turned poor Ron into my errand boy, didn’t watch my big mouth and made Shego hop on one foot for five minutes, and then took away her freedom of speech, twice! Grrrr! And now Wade says it’s affecting my fucking moods too! AND I’m shouting and swearing right now, aren’t I? What the fuck?!”

 

“Watch your mouth young lady. I don’t care what’s been done to you; that’s no excuse for coarse language in this house.” Anne sighed softly and shook her head. She had to admit her daughter had a point, though.

 

She’d been looking at it from the standpoint of Kimmie having a super-power, the way Shego and her brothers did. It was actually more like an affliction that she couldn’t control, though. Her poor little girl had to be careful of every word she said, and it was only getting worse as the days went on.

 

Finally, she decided maybe she should try a different tact; if her daughter really was turning into some mood-swinging mind controller, best to keep her calm. “Kimmie, about Miss Go,”

 

“She’s not Miss Go!” Kim snapped back again. After a moment though, she took a long deep breath. “Miss Go was a personality created by the Attitudinator, from what anyone can tell me. Which isn’t a lot, considering the Attitudinator was altered by Electronique, and even Jack Hench doesn’t know what all it could do.” Kim’s eyes settled down from their angry stare after a long moment and she let out a pained breath. She actually missed the easy-going, albeit emotional, substitute teacher.

 

“Oh…” Anne nodded, after swallowing her bite of loaf. She could hear the hurt and uncertainty in her daughter’s voice and sighed gently. “Well, about Sheshona then… I’m worried that maybe she is a bad influence on you dear. All this swearing didn’t happen before she got here. I’m afraid that I may have to ask her to leave.

 

The older redhead knew it was a mistake as soon as it was said. It was going to set Kim off, she was certain. Why was brain surgery sometimes so much easier than speaking with her daughter?

 

“Gahhhh! Shut Up Mom! Shego is NOT a bad influence on me! I’ve fought her for years without the cursing! It’s the damned shampoo that’s doing this!!!” Kim slammed her fists on the table, and then stood up and stormed out the back door into the garage. “I’m going for a drive. She better still be here when I get back!”

 

Anne could hear the Sloth 2.0 fire up and pull out, and sighed yet again. Then she groaned, because her mouth wouldn’t open. She tapped her fingers irritable on the table and then went to find a note pad to communicate with her husband and other children. She couldn’t believe her teenage daughter had just given her what _sounded_ like an ultimatum. All it was missing was the “or else” at the end.

 

\-----

 

 “Hope that recall doesn’t catch up with her…” Shego mused as she saw tail lights streaking off into the night. Sighing at the blonde’s flight, she turned back to Wade, “Now… you had been saying about how to cure this?”

 

As she motioned to her Mediterranean complexion and brown eyes, and unseen lack of powers, Wade shifted uncomfortably, “Yeah,” He chuckled uneasily, “About that…”

 

“There’s that phrase again.” Shego rattled out a ragged sigh and shook her head. A weary expression seemed to have taken up near-permanent residence on her face. “Look Nerdlinger, you didn’t do this to us; and I’m not going to kill the messenger if it’s bad news… so just spill all right?”

 

Letting out a long breath of relief, the chocolate-complected boy seemed to decompress, “From what I’ve found from the scans of you, Kim, and Yori; there may not be a cure. The ‘Products’ all have drastically altered parts of your bodies and brains that can’t just be un-done by taking a magic pill. Kim’s hair follicles, for instance, have been badly bleached. And your skin and hair seem to be completely lacking the meteor particles that gave you your green color before.”

 

As Wade looked away in defeat and sighed, Shego took a moment to look at her hands, which now had the rich olive complexion of her Greek heritage. She mentally commented that maybe having normal skin wouldn’t be so bad… but her bunko eyesight was not something she wanted to deal with, nor the other benefits the meteor had come with.

 

“Okay… when you say ‘may be no cure’ does that mean there might be one, in an outside chance?” She looked to the young teen with a pleading and encouraging expression.

 

Wade responded with an odd gesture, shrugging and nodding at the same time. “There’s _always_ a chance… with Drakken’s notes, samples of all the formulas, and some really good luck… but it’s a _very_ outside chance.”

 

“But you’re saying there’s a chance…” Sheshona paraphrased some inane movie she had watched at the lair, but thought it was a valid point, considering the company she was keeping these days. After a long, purging breath, she addressed her next concern, “Now… you said some things about what the shampoo had done to kim, and how it was related to the other ‘products?’”

 

It was about this point that Kim’s parents joined the pair in the living room, Anne with notepad in hand.

 

Giving the adults another uncertain look, Wade toyed with his own fingers a moment, “Well, based on my own scans, and the stuff NASA and the CDC sent back, there’s a few chemicals that all the Drak-co stuff have in common. And the shampoo has more of these than any other ‘product.’”

 

Anne rapidly scribbled something down, and then handed it to her husband, who read it to himself, and then aloud, “Do you know what any of these chemicals are, where they came from, or what they normally do?” After he asked the question, James paused a moment, and then added to the query, “Yes… Drew has a nasty habit of co-opting other people’s work for his own fiendish needs. Where did the stuff he used on my Kimmie-cub come from?”

 

“Great… more outsourcing.” Shego groaned, cradling her chin tiredly in her hands after a moment. “You know, it’s not going like he thought, but Drakken might actually pull it off this time.”

 

The other three occupants of the living room looked at the Grecian mercenary with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. Finally, Anne scribbled another note and handed it to her husband-turned interpreter. “Anne wants to know if you’re holding out on us… and so do I, Sheshona. DO you know Drakken’s plan?”

 

Making a face at the repeated use of her birth-name, Shego sighed again, lifting her chin from her hands, “Trusting bunch, aren’t you?”

 

“Well, you’re not exactly the kind to inspire trust you know,” Wade interjected.

 

Shego gave a non-committal shrug as if in acceptance of that statement, and continued, “Well, he _was_ ranting on about how the world would be his when he controlled Kim Possible, yadda yadda yadda…”

 

A circular motion of her hand told the others that this was the point that Shego had tuned out of the rant. “But then I cut him off and stormed off. Unfortunately, I think I pushed blue boy over the edge this time. He doesn’t take criticism well, you know?”

 

“No, he never did… it all started with those Bebe-bots of his back in school,” James intoned…

 

“Oh, you mean the school that let him in, but he left on his own?” the mercenary began to chuckle softly, recalling Drakken’s ranting about having actually made it to college.

 

Another note from Anne, read by her husband, “We’re getting off task here. What is happening to Kim?”

 

Wade again sighed in resignation, getting fairly weary of all the bad news he’d been delivering so far, “Increased hormone levels, especially testosterone and progesterone; and increased activity in her right frontal lobe, which is where some people believe-,”

 

“That telepathy and telekinesis are centered.” Shego continued without prompting.

 

The three geniuses on the room looked at Shego with expressions ranging from mild surprise to outright shock.

 

“What? You think I could have had a body as screwed up as this one… well as screwed up as this one _used to be_ … and not know a thing or two about abnormal biology?” She took more than a little arrogant joy in surprising the braniacs, in her opinion; and were she a little more playful feeling, Sheshona probably would have stuck her tongue out at them.

 

“… uh yeah… What she said.” Wade continued after a moment. “Plus, her pheromone levels are probably higher, but I don’t have instruments capable of measuring that. So, between turning on her psychic centers, winding up her aggression, and tuning up her scent glands… it makes it pretty difficult for anyone to refuse what Kim says. “

 

Anne nodded frustratedly in agreement with that statement.

 

“And that’s why the other ‘products’ are also affecting people’s behavior mostly? Because whatever Dork-ken used targets the brain?” Shego continued, although her eyes seemed to be elsewhere at the moment, along with her concentration.

 

“Seems like it; except for this body-wash stuff. Its effects seem to be entirely physical, which is why we have to go to GJ in the morning. Dr. Director said some of that got into the showers, and now half of her male agents can’t stand up.”

 

“Hmm… he must have taken out the bubblegum scent…” Shego mused, now more distracted than ever by something on her mind.

 

 


	14. 0330

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN/A: A few people have commented about my seeming focus on Ron’s “happy pants” over Yori. While I know it can be annoying or offensive to constantly read about that, there is a reason for it if you delve deeper in this story. When I began crafting the two different relationships portrayed in “A.B.M.” (no, Bonnie/Larry doesn’t count) I wanted to portray two different aspects of love, especially teenaged love.   
> -Ron and Yori reflect the physical side of things. The pawing at each other, the almost physical need, and the way Ron’s body keeps betraying his mind and causing him to make suspect decisions.   
> -Kim and Shego, on the other hand, represent the angsty emotional component. Will she/won’t she ask me out, does she really like me or is it just hormones? Am I worthy? Etc…   
> And since people pick up on physical signs such as Ron’s perpetual hardon more easily than emotional signs, well… I guess maybe some have been missing the emotional pair and I’ve apparently not been pointing them out as clearly as I’d hoped. So anyways, there’s why. Also, after this chapter, don’t worry; Ron and Yori and Kim and Shego will be too busy to be pawing at each other, emotionally or physically, for a while.

Ron and Yori were making their way back to Ron’s parent’s house in a fairly heavy silence. Ron was filled with a storm of conflicting emotions that he didn’t know how to deal with. Among those were anger with Kim for not believing more in him, anger with Yori for not backing off after the numerous times he’d asked her to, confusion over the feelings each girl instilled in him, confusion at Shego’s completely non-sequitorous behavior tonight, Irritation at Wade for not telling him about Kim’s “affliction,” and on and on.

 

Yori, for her part, knew she had crossed a line in attacking Kim-san. She also knew that Ron was not likely to forgive her for it easily. She realized now that perhaps Wade-san was correct in his assessment of her being “afflicted” and “got by Drakken” after all.

 

Ron heard car doors closing and looked up in the street lights, as it was well on towards 9 pm now. His parents were loading up the family car, again! He sighed and was about to say something to Yori, when he felt a whoosh of air next to him.

 

Yori had vanished, and try as Ron might, he could not see to where, since the street lamp was far too slender for even the lithe ninja to hide behind. He knew that for a fact, because he had tried that himself.

 

Grumbling and scrubbing his hand over his face, he made his way across to the driveway, where his dad was parking.

 

“Oh, Ronald! I’m sorry son, but your mother’s bank needs her to go to Duluth for some conference. Hanna and I are riding along. You’ll be on your own for a few more days.” His father sighed after lifting the new, armor-plated play pen into the trunk.

 

“Oh man!” the blonde boy scuffed his shoe on the pavement and sighed. “Dad, I kinda wanted to talk to you about some… things… and I need a man’s advice.”

 

Ron had learned the hard way after a few abortive attempts, that Steve Barkin’s advice… well… sucked. _“A real man is big and/or strong”_ and things of that ilk.

 

“Well son, I’ve always got time for you… what seems to be the problem?”

 

Shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, Ron looked anywhere but at his dad, “Well, it’s about Kim and I…”

 

“Oh! Did you solve this nasty shampoo problem of hers?”

 

“Not exactly, but we’re working on it. Look dad… Um… how do I put this? How do you deal with it when you have one totally awesome girl you really love; but this other one, who’s awesomely baddical in a totally different way, is making a hard play for you?”

 

Mr. Stoppable took a long look at his son, arching a brow. “Well son, you have to decide what you’re feeling for each girl… is it love, or is it just lust?”

 

“Love… or lust?” the blonde boy parroted after a moment. “Um… Explain?”

 

“Well Ronald... You’re a young man now. It’s about time you understood that there’s more to women and men than the birds and bees.” Ron’s dad paused in loading the car to turn and face him. “There are a lot of _very_ attractive women out there vying for a man’s attention. Believe me, I know; I meet them every time I go out to a convention or a dinner.”

 

After pausing a moment to further consider his explanation, Mr. Stoppable continued. “Lust is a natural thing that all men and women go through when we want for something that we don’t actually need. Not just sex, but that’s the most common form.”

 

Ron nodded. He could understand that much, that wasn’t his problem. His problem was in _dealing_ with two girls and his increasingly conflicted feelings. “…and?”

 

“…and I know that sometimes it can be difficult to keep your eye from roving and the rest of you from following when someone offers… things… that you don’t get at home. So the question you have to ask yourself is this. Is what you’re feeling for this other ‘badical girl’ lust for some physical thing? Or is it love for something you actually need in your life that you’ve been missing? And either way, is that worth what you’d be giving up to have it?”

 

Ron boggled. His father seemed to have summed up all his doubts. Beyond that, Dad seemed to actually have some experience in this matter from the way he was presenting it to Ron. “Wow…” was all he could muster for a long moment, during which his mom and baby sister came out with the last few things for their trip.

 

Seeing his family getting ready to load up spurred the awkward boy to ask another question while he had the chance, “So… how do I know the difference between love and lust? How do I know if it’s worth giving up what I’ve got, which is bon diggity?”

 

Ron’s father sighed and shook his head, a knowing smile borne of experience crossing his face. “That’s something only you can figure out, son.”

 

“Awwwe man!” Ron whined as his father got into the car. This left him no closer to his answer than he was already, in his opinion.

 

“Take care Ron, I know you’ll figure this out. I trust you to make the right decision. We’ll be back Friday evening.”

 

As the family pulled away, Ron’s mother turned to her husband after taking in her son’s crestfallen expression, “What was that about hon?”

 

“Our boy is having a little crisis of the heart, dear… But I think he already knows what choice to make.”

 

Ron watched the car disappear, and wasn’t so certain.

 

\-----

 

Kim drove all night long, trying to cool down. She’d recently learned the serenity of a late night drive by herself; and thanks to the new engines the tweebs had put in the Sloth, she didn’t even need to stop for gas.

 

As she drove, Kim was wrestling with all the stressors and revelations of the night. What was she going to do about Ron? That darned ninja slut was hanging all over him, and obviously distracting him. No, more than distracting him, she was seducing him!

 

Beyond that, what was up with Sheshona, Shego, Elsb- no, not that one… What was going on with the mercenary who was staying at her house? She wasn’t acting like the hard-bitten warrior Kim knew so well. In fact, she didn’t even seem to be certain of her own name any more. And why was Kim herself feeling so forgiving?

 

The cheerleader knew that Shego was not Miss Go, she had said as much to her mother. Miss GO had been Kim’s friend; a very good friend. Shego, however, was a hardened and unapologetic criminal. Yet, Kim had held and comforted that criminal this afternoon when she'd cried. She could sympathize with what the villainess was going through.

 

“WHY?!” she demanded of the sound-deadened interior of her magenta super-car. She wanted to know why it was she could suddenly forgive Shego’s actions when she never could before.

 

Then there were the snippets she’d managed to catch from Wade during her battle with Yori. As Kim drove on into the night, traveling Colorado back roads and rolling through the backcountry, she tried to piece together what she had heard. She could tell, like she thought she heard Wade say, that her aggression was up.

 

Unfortunately, all the driving didn’t give Kim any answers to any of her worries this night. All she did was drive, look up through the glass top of the Sloth at the stars, and ruminate on her problems. Finally, exhaustion started setting in, brought about by the stress of thinking, and the endurance drain of driving several hours.

 

The blonde set the auto-drive and the car brought itself back to Middleton as she stared up at the night sky still more. She felt very… alone… as the magenta super-car wound through the suburbs. It seemed no one else was dealing with all these sorts of issues aside from her.

 

Looking down as she saw a familiar pattern of streetlamps, Kim sighed and saw the time.

 

It was three-thirty in the morning now; had she really been driving and ruminating that long? Oh well. Switching back to driver mode, Kim turned the sloth to all-electric-mode and silently pulled into the driveway. She couldn’t shake that lonely feeling as she exited the Sloth and quietly shut the door.

 

\-----

 

Shego finally hurled the sheets off her body and sat up, irritably. She’d been tossing and turning in the guest bedroom for hours now, drifting in and out of a fitful sleep. She knew what was that was bothering her, but she wasn’t ready to deal with it yet. Not here… in the den of the enemy. She could deal with this when she was loose and on her own again.

 

She reached for the glass by the nightstand and tilted it to her lips, only to be rewarded with a few lukewarm drops of water, and a lot of air. “Darn it…”

 

Grumbling at the lack of refreshment, and more so at the leashing of her tongue yet again, she got up and wandered down the stairs to the kitchen. She pressed the glass against the dispenser built into the family fridge and let it fill with chilled water, sighing at a minor headache building in the back of her head.

 

This was another thing she’d not had to deal with before this week; aches and pains. Taking the glass to the sink in the near-darkness of the kitchen, Sheshona leaned against the counter and looked out into the back yard through the moon-lit window. She wasn’t looking forward to being a mere mortal for the rest of her life.

 

The other problem, the one that was keeping her awake, was pushed aside in favour of this self-pity problem. Honestly, as much as she complained bitterly about it at the rent-a-lair, the Greek woman wouldn’t mind _not_ being green any more. She liked standing out, liked being unique… but the stares got to her every now and then. Being the center of attention was one thing, but being stared at was another thing entirely.

 

The rest, though, bothered her. Sheshona didn’t want to wear glasses and contacts. She didn’t want to worry about things like being stabbed, shot, and falling from great heights. She definitely didn’t want to have to rely on guns for the rest of her criminal life in lieu of her plasma powers. She looked down at her other hand, the one still wrapped in a layer of gauze from the burns she had earned escaping Drakken’s lair days before. That should have healed in seconds, a few minutes at the most. What good was she in the villain game if she could be so easily wounded now?

 

“Ha… Like anyone would have a washed up ex-hero, ex-supervillain, ex-sidekick like me.” she grumbled. She took a long pull from the water, letting the cool liquid soothe some of her irritability and headache.

 

Turning a bit in the darkness, she looked at the clock atop the stove, and grumbled again. This was why she had a headache, she’d left glasses upstairs and now was virtually blind; straining to make out anything more than a few feet in front of her. After a bit of concentration, Shego finally made out the red LED clock built in to the stove and sighed. Three-thirty A.M. Had she really been tossing in bed for five hours?

 

“Yeah… a _blind,_ washed up ex-hero, ex-supervillain, ex-sidekick like me.” She sighed again, returning her gaze to the soft moonlight outside the window.

 

With a sense of lonely embitterment, the woman who was alternately Shego and Sheshona Elsbeth Go leaned heavily on the sink and let the night wash over her, wishing the silence of the house extended to include her own thoughts.

 

Kim slipped silently into the kitchen from the garage, and was a bit startled to see a silhouette at the sink. After a moment of concentration on the shapely body caught in the light of the half-moon; Kim realized it was Shego, and her initial apprehension relaxed, replaced once more by her own internal isolation.

 

Heedless of her normal antipathy towards the older fighter, Kim obeyed an impulse in her heart and slipped behind Sheshona. She felt lonely, and the teenage girl in her just wanted a hug from someone, anyone, before she went to bed. Leaning against the taller woman, Kim wrapped her arms around Sheshona’s waist and rested her cheek between the woman’s shoulders, inhaling through her hair softly and relaxing.

 

Shego tensed instantly at the contact. Who the hell had snuck up on her?! No one snuck up on the great Shego! After a second though, she remembered whose house she was in. Her skin confirmed a moment later that it must be Kim, because of the size of the body resting easily against her own. Yes, only the teen hero had a hope in hell of sneaking up on her, and that was on her best day. She was just distracted tonight was all.

 

Sheshona began to relax again and leaned forward once more. She was once more clad only in a pink tank top and panties borrowed from the girl behind her, and the warmth was welcomed in the chill of the night. Standing in the moonlight, she continued to relax, again allowing the night to consume her. This time though, her mind stayed silent, simply existing and enjoying the contact.

 

Kim relaxed further against the taller woman and entwined her fingers around the bare, muscular belly they rested against. The kitchen was cool this evening, and Shego felt warm against her cheek, where it rested on the woman’s olive skin between her shoulders. A faint, content sigh escaped Kim’s lips and rolled over Sheshona’s shoulders.

 

The warm breath caused Shego to sag forward further and murmur with relaxation. Suddenly, the silence wasn’t so annoying. And her headache had faded, a small part of her noticed. Mostly, she noticed the warmth though. She was beginning to notice that lack of plasma fire meant she could actually get cold. It had started earlier today, but now it seemed worse. She definitely appreciated the warmth of the teen against her.

 

Inhaling softly, and holding on to the thief, Kim sighed again, breathing gently and squeezing the other woman softly. Hugs were always good after a long day. The newly-blonde girl was surprised how soft Shego’s skin was; she’d always thought it would be sort of dry and rubbery, with the way it was green-gray and constantly exposed to plasma heat and everything.

 

Without thinking, Kim pressed her lips to the soft, inviting skin and breathed softly. The touch of her lips evolved into a soft kiss, which was followed by another, as Kim squeezed the warm woman again and sighed softly.

 

Sheshona began to melt back against Kim and purred out softly, her lips parting in relief and enjoyment. She reached down and caressed the arms wrapped about her.

 

As if of one mind, both women froze at the same instant, realization setting in.

 

_‘Why am I kissing Shego?’_

_‘Why am I letting Kim kiss me?’_

 

Kim backed up slightly, and Shego turned around in her arms. The two women looked at each other nervously, their hearts accelerating in time with each other. Uncertainly, the darker woman leaned down and closed her eyes, her body operating on autopilot it seemed. Kim mimicked her movements, closing her eyes and arching upwards hesitantly.

 

As their lips met, electricity arced between the two young women. Kim’s arms again tightened around Sheshona. Sheshona slowly folded her arms around Kim, pulling her closer.

 

_‘Why am I kissing Kim?’_

_‘Why am I letting Shego kiss me?’_

 

_‘Why am I enjoying it?’_ they both thought in unison.

 

After a long moment, the kiss broke, and the women rested their foreheads against each other. Their eyes still closed, each sighed deeply and licked her own lips, still tasting the other.

 

After a long moment of silence that easily qualified as pregnant, Kim managed to speak; almost panting with a mixture of nervousness, surprise, and what she now realized was arousal, “So… Elsbeth, what…”

 

“What was that, bubblebutt?” Shego’s own breathing was quick and flustered as she spoke, tingling as she felt Kim’s breath against her lips, and utterly terrified of opening her eyes. “I don’t know.”

 

“Well, off hand I’d say it was a kiss.” Kim smirked softly, but she felt like she could practically taste her heart at the back of her throat. Her mind continued, _‘like, the best one I’ve ever had’_

“Hey, leave the sarcasm to the experts, Bubblebutt…” Unknowingly, Shego matched Kim’s soft smirk, but with their eyes still closed, their foreheads still touching, neither girl knew. _‘but I’ll leave the kissing to you… cause damn that was good!’_

 

Managing to gain a little more control over her breathing, Kim continued after a moment. “Shego… I don’t know why I did that. I mean… I never…”

 

“Yeah… me either Kim,” she whispered softly, not trusting herself yet to speak more loudly.

 

“What do you mean you never- Wait… did you just call me…?”

 

“Yeah, I guess I did…” Sheshona sighed heavily at the admission, and finally forced her brown eyes own, looking at the pale, freckled face so close to hers. “And I meant I never thought about kissing you before. Not before this week anyway.”

 

Kim could almost sense that Shego had opened her eyes. So she finally worked up the courage to open hers as well. “I Um… I meant I never kissed a girl before. But no… I didn’t think about kissing you before either, not before just now.”

 

Kim stiffened when she felt movement behind her, until she realized it was the woman she was holding, caressing her back softly. Then she heard a familiar throaty chuckle and returned her attention to Sheshona. “What?”

 

“I’ve never kissed a girl either… Plenty of women, yes. And men? Hoooh boy yes! But never a girl…”

 

Blushing intently and looking away, Kim sighed. “Wade said something about my pheromones being all out of whack. Maybe that’s why-,”

 

Her reasoning was silenced by Shego drawing her chin up, and pressing their lips together tenderly for a long moment.

 

Finally, the need for air, and to speak, overwhelmed the feeling in Kim’s belly to hold on to the kiss longer. She broke away, looking up at the older woman in amazement, “But Sheg-,”

 

Her voice was silenced again, this time by Shego’s fingers against her lips as the older woman leaned back to look at her. “Gotta say, Princess, I’m really not digging this dumb blonde act of yours.”

 

She smiled softly and finally removed her finger tips from the blonde’s lips, wrapping her hand again about Kim’s waist. “Bubblebutt, pheromones would explain why I kissed you… not why you kissed me.” She smirked broadly, arching a brow imperiously, “Kissed me first, I might add.”

 

Kim blushed again, but this time it was more natural, less like a bright red light bulb. Then it faded quickly as time caught up with her. Groaning, she rested her head on Shego’s shoulder, “Shit… What does all this mean? And what about Ron? I love him!”

 

The Mediterranean woman sighed heavily as Kim forced reality back for them both. She rested her lips against the blonde crown of Kim’s head, but then turned away. Kim was involved. With a doofus who she didn’t seem that into at the moment, but she was still involved. Finally, she turned away from Kim, separating them and looking once more out at the cold, lonely moon.

 

“Elsbeth?” Kim moved to reach for her again.

 

Shego growled faintly to herself. Why did she get a shiver when Kim called her that? She held up a hand, stopping Kim. “When the freak did I learn to be so selfless? This is what I get for hanging around a hero.”

 

Turning, she gave Kim a weary look. “Bubblebutt, firstly… could you please stop swearing? Or at least let me join in the fun?”

 

“Oooops! Okay, um… you can… speak freely?” Kim bit her lip and blushed, having forgotten she’d done that to Shego again, what with everything else on her mind.

 

“Fuck…” Shego sighed with almost physical relief, “That’s better. Now… about Ron,”

 

“Whoa… two real names! You’re on a roll Sheshona!”

 

“I told you to leave that sarcasm shit to the pro’s, Bubblebutt.” Shego gave her a vexed expression that couldn’t seem to decide whether it wanted to be playful or worn out. “I know you love Ron. I’m just… this woman who tries to kick your ass.”

 

“I think you’re more than that. I have for a while now. You helped your brothers last year! And when Josh and I were on our date, I know you approved, I heard you say it.” Kim smiled softly, but the unease was getting thick between them, “I kind of figured that if you had stayed a hero, all those years ago, we might have been friends when we met up.”

 

Shego blinked. “Yeah… sure… if I’d stayed a damned hero. Wait, you knew I was there?”

 

It was Kim’s turn to smirk. “Yeah… but you know, it was just a lucky guess, cause there’s so many green skinned women in Middleton.”

 

Shego gave her the same mixed look again and shook her head. “Fine fine… you can do the sarcasm. What I was trying to say was this… Ron obviously is a great guy… He must be to be with you, because I know you wouldn’t settle for less. So just… sleep on it or something I guess.”

 

Kim looked at the taller fighter with a mixed expression of her own. “Sleep on it or something?”

 

Shego turned around, seized Kim around the waist again, and gave her a kiss that left the former redhead’s toes curled and her entire body breaking out in a fine sweat.

 

“Yeah… if I told you to just run off with me and forget about Ron, you never would. But remember, I’m not a hero either.” Shego panted as she broke the kiss, licking her lips between words and relishing the taste of Kim’s lips in a way she never thought she would. “So I’m not about to tell you to go do the right goddamned thing either. This ain’t Casablanca, and I am damned sure not Humphrey Bogart.”

 

Kim almost missed what Shego said. She was still caught up in the kiss, and suddenly she understood exactly how Ron must feel. Her heart was racing, her chest was heaving as though she’d just fought with Shego, not kissed her; and frankly, she was going to need a fresh pair of panties and a shower before bed… Yes, a _very_ cold shower.

 

Finally though, hormones gave way to will power, and Kim nodded. Yet, even as she spoke, her lips kept trying to reach for Shego’s, which were still very close with their foreheads pressed together yet again. “Ooooo- Okay then… I’ll… I’ll sleep on it… or something… like you said.”

 

As the two separated and went to different stairwells, Shego again wondered when the fuck she'd become so selfless.

 

Kim wondered just what she was going to do about this. But maybe Shego was right, maybe sleep would make things more clear.

 

Both women slammed their doors a bit harder than normal, and both did indeed indulge in very cold showers before bed.

 

\-----


	15. 0347

\---- ----- ----- ----- -----

 

Dr. Drakken sat in his command center, eyeing his report files and grinning like, well… a mad man. His Caribbean hideout was abuzz with activity as his hired henchmen scurried about, prepping transports and loading up big red synthodrones into drop pods as they prepared for stage three of “the plan.” Meanwhile, Drakken himself was staring at a report from his newest lieutenant, Stanislawz.

 

“Good work lad, good work!” he clapped his tiny, latex-clad hands together with delight as he read a spying report that said Kim Possible and Shego were apparently now staying together. “I’m truly impressed with your sources, where did you obtain this data?”

 

The rent-a-goon shuffled his feet nervously, and coughed. “You know… the usual Hench-co contractors… grease the right palms and all… It comes with your contract.”

 

With his back to his henchman, Drakken didn’t see his fidgeting, and the tone in the man’s voice was lost on him. He continued flipping through his plans and calculations, and then suddenly, he thrust his finger triumphantly into the air, “I have it!!!”

 

“You have what sir?”

 

Drakken was a bit taken aback by this response; Shego would have said something along the lines of “well don’t give it to me,” or “whatever it is, you can keep it.”

 

After a stunned moment, he continued, “Well Stanislawz, where are most of the scientific geniuses in the western United States at?”

 

This was one the ‘henchman’ had a ready answer for, since it was pretty much common knowledge to both law enforcement and villainy alike, “Middleton Colorado, sir,”

 

“Yes, yes yes yes…. And where is my former lieutenant right now?” Drakken slowly rubbed his faintly squeaky latex gloves together.

 

“I don’t-“

 

“Yes, Middleton! And, where is the apparently incapacitate Kimberly Possible, who hasn’t been on any missions in several days now according to your own reports?”

 

“Middle-,”

 

“Middleton! Hahahahaha…” He began laughing in what could easily qualify as a maniacal manner, “and where can we go to afflict the most so-called scientists, recapture my ‘patient zero,’ and avenge ourselves on my teenaged nemesis?! Where can we kill three squirrels with one stone?!”

 

Stanislawz remained silent, not in the mood to be interrupted a third time when he apparently should know the answer.

 

“Middleton! Hahahaha, exactly right my good man!” Drakken ranted on as though Stanislawz had actually responded to him, “Round up the men! We’re taking a bit of a field trip.”

 

As Dr. Drakken wandered off to collect some things, his ‘henchman’ just groaned and rubbed his face irritably, Then he reached into his pocket for a stealthy little communicator to call in on the change of plans, “Doctor Director does _not_ pay me well enough for this! I should have listened to my mother and gone into accounting.”

 

\-----

 

Something was stirring Ron Stoppable from sleep. It wasn’t one of his monkey or gnome related night terrors, nor was it a sudden craving for cheese and salsa. No, it was something entirely more… pleasant.

 

It was _extremely_ pleasant, which was why Ron was starting to wake up. Actually, pleasant wasn’t the word for what Ron’s base instincts was telling him was happening, but you try coming up with proper descriptive grammar in the small hours of the morning.

 

As the teen boy’s brown eyes drifted open he noticed several things in quick progression, as quick as his sleep-addled mind allowed anyway. His blankets had been pulled away. His boxers were down to about mid-thigh. Something… no _someone_ was laying on the foot of his bed, with their head in his lap, and doing things to him that made his head swim and his toes curl.

 

Ron was faced with a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, he had never had a blowjob before; never had anything particularly sexual done to him at all in fact. That insidious part of his brain that had been plaguing him over the last few days was ordering him not to interrupt what was going on. He was inclined to agree with it given his sleep-diminished faculties.

 

However, the other hand held reason; and the fact that his room had been invaded and his sleep interrupted by who-knew-who, and they were taking advantage of him, no matter how enjoyable that advantage was. This was so not bueno, and held an air of danger for the boy who was already a bit paranoid given his world-saving hobby.

 

As reason battled the twin forces of sleepiness and horniness, Ron tried to gather his facts. This was pretty difficult, considering whoever had their head in his lap had suddenly reached up and cupped him as well, doubling the warmth in his crotch and sending even more sensations he was unprepared for rocketing up his spine. Finally, swallowing a groan of pleasure as though it were a too-large bite of chimichanga, Ron managed to look at the head in his lap more objectively.

 

Dark red hair could be made out in the faint light coming from the street-light in through his open bedroom window. It sat on a head on a pair of shoulders clad in a black top, and obscured the face in his lap. His hormone addled brain knew this combination well and he collapsed back, releasing that trapped groan of pleasure, his hips rising of their own will now that his brain was satisfied he wasn’t in danger. How could he fail to recognize his girlfriend’s trademark look?

 

“Oh my god… Kim… why are you-,” Ron let out an almost shocked, but ecstatic moan of confusion and relief. Kim was doing this?! To him?! He knew they were in love, but she’d never voiced any desires like this. He was confused, but not complaining too loudly.

 

There was a sort of irritated grunt from his lap, and the hand that was cupping him suddenly tightened in a very threatening manner, sending sudden clarity north to his brain.

 

The clarity brought with it a fact his lower brain had been trying to conceal from his upper brain. Kim didn’t wear a black turtleneck anymore… She wore a purple tunic-

 

Reason was momentarily derailed when whoever was going down on him began bobbing their head up and down more firmly on him, redoubling their efforts and making his toes again curl and his legs faintly kick in ecstasy. A second hand had joined the first and was stroking along him, and Ron was a squirming helpless victim of his own body for a long moment as new sensations overwhelmed him.

 

Finally though, he managed to pull his mind free of hormones and concentrate, because he knew something was wrong. The fog of sleep was finally giving way enough for him to realize what, or rather who, it was. He knew one woman today who was wearing a black turtleneck.

 

“Y-yori!?” he panted out, unable to muster any seriousness or panic to his voice. He wanted those tones to be there, but the things being done to him made it impossible to put any of the unease he felt into his words.

 

The reaction down below confirmed his one-word question. The hand that was cupping and gripping him relaxed once more into a less threatening posture, and he felt the shape of the lips wrapped around him change shape into what might be a smile. At least he thought that he felt that… things were becoming muddled in his mind even as he tried to squirm away.

 

Ron’s escape was prevented all at once by several things, however. For one, the boxers around his thighs were gripped, twisted, and tightened expertly, binding his legs effectively in place with a minimum of effort. Secondly, the hand that wasn’t doing the binding was still sliding up and down his saliva-coated anatomy, shorting out his nervous system from the waist down and aiding his reptile brain in rebelling against what his higher brain knew was wrong. Most importantly though, was the fact that Ron was a virgin.

 

Thus, he was completely unprepared for the intensity of the orgasm that suddenly paralyzed his entire body. It was far more powerful than anything the boy had ever done by himself, and sent the remainder of his higher mind swimming as he gasped and groaned, and his hips rocked against the warmth lying atop them.

 

When conscious thought finally returned to Ron Stoppable a moment or two later, he sat up, ignoring his still bound legs, and seized his ‘attacker’ angrily about the shoulder with one hand, the other snapping out to turn on the bed-side lamp.

 

It took still another moment for him to shake off the last dregs of post-orgasmic light-headedness and take in Yori’s appearance. Resisting the angry impulse to shove her completely from the bed, Ron forced himself to look at her. Her lips, were, of course swollen faintly, a mixture of her own passion and the suction aspect of what she had just been doing to him. Saliva-coated too, but that was not what Ron was boggling at.

 

Her hair was a dark, almost metallic red; a shocking departure from the glossy obsidian it naturally bore, and the source of his initial misguided relaxation when he had seen it before. His first impulse was to believe that this was another side effect of Drak-co products, much like Kim and Shego’s hair, which had also changed color.

 

Then his eyes, already adjusted to the dim light, picked out a few darkened drops around her neck and shoulders. He knew well enough that they weren’t from _him_ , given experience, and the sensation he felt that she had kept her mouth over him during his climax. Then he saw a red splotch on her neck, too large and transparent to be a freckle.

 

“Yori!” was all he could say. It came out somewhere between a growl and a shout. He again had to resist the urge to fling her to the floor. It was very difficult to do given the deep sense of betrayal and violation he felt growing inside him as the last blush of base pleasure fled from his brain. Finally he hissed through clenched teeth, “Why?!”

 

Yori had been looking away, ashamed at the anger of his initial reaction, and continued to do so for a long moment. When she finally deigned to look back at Ron, he felt his heart getting tugged at. With her artificially darkened eyes wide and almost puppy-like in fear, and framed by the metallic raspberry, Ron felt the harshest edge of his anger soften a bit.

 

Still; the Asian girl, altered and afflicted or not, had stolen something incredibly important from him, something he had been saving. She had done so with subterfuge and intent; knowing it was wrong, if her hair was any indication. It was something he’d planned to give to Kim, probably since he was old enough to understand such things.

 

Taking a deep breath, Ron stared at her eyes, the normally chocolate colored irises now almost indistinguishable from the black pupil they surrounded, and shook his head. “Yori… Why did you… no, I know why you did… you wanted to do that for a while now huh?”

 

Yori nodded sadly, again looking away. She would not be ashamed of giving her Ron pleasure and she would never lie to him about her motivations. She wanted to make him happy in all ways.

 

“…h-hai…” she whispered, nervous that his anger would rise again if she seemed to eager, as she had seen it in his eyes twice tonight already.

 

Ron sighed again at the tremor in her voice. His heart seemed to be joining the camp of his hormones against his mind now. And her slight shaking in his grasp was helping it. Still, his mind was the part in control here, not his penis or his heart. A slight edge returned to his voice, “And your hair? Did you change that to fool me? So you could have your fun before I realized what was going on?”

 

“NO! NEVER! Ron-kun!” She bit her lower lip and looked at him with an unreadable, but panicked expression on her face. “I… I believed that… that you would be more accepting of me if I looked like someone else you were attracted to. Her red hair is so exotic that I thought that if I had…”

 

She trailed off, looking away again and still trembling faintly in his grasp, a few tears rolling down her ivory cheeks.

 

Ron sighed heavily. He didn’t want to hurt Yori, ever. She just didn’t seem to be understanding things since she was under the influence of Drakken’s stuff. She hadn’t been like this before. She had been gracious and accepting.

 

Ron blinked a bit confusedly when he felt her hands moving at his lap again. His urge to jump away from any further violations was stilled when he realized she was trying to help him by pulling his boxers up, not trying to molest him again. Awkwardly and embarrassedly, Ron moved and slid them up himself, moving her arms aside carefully, now afraid of being the one to startle her for some reason.

 

Turning away from him, and sitting, her legs folded artfully under her body in the sheiza form, a manner of compliance, Yori continued while staring at a wall.

 

 “Ron-kun, I love you. And I wish for you to love me as well. I will do, and indeed have done, anything to cause that to happen. Kimberly-san is not worthy of you, but I thought that if I imitated her, you would realize what I could offer to you. And so I have been bold, and I have struck out at my enemies with swiftness, and now I have changed my appearance to match hers.”

 

Ron was not so much stunned by the words, as by the quiet vehemence behind them. Even now, in her wildly unpredictable state, Yori held a quiet inner strength and that darned contemplative wisdom Master Sensei had. She really did want more than to just get into his pants.

 

He reached out to lightly touch her shoulder, wanting her to turn so he could talk to her face-to-face. When he touched her though, the quiet introspective Yori was again replaced by the impulsive one, as she seized and fervently began kissing and caressing his hand. “Ron, you deserve someone who uplifts and supports you and believes in all that you can do! Kimberly-kohai does none of these things! I have seen her demean you before your friends and enemies alike!”

 

Sighing again heavily, Ron dropped his head. Yori was still not herself… yet now his heart was seizing at her words. There was a subversive truth in them. Kim did make jokes at his expense once in a while. And her tone wasn’t always “supporting” either.

 

The woman before him didn’t do those things. She never had anything but praise for him, and cherished the silliness in him that Kim seemed to want to change.

 

He couldn’t blame Kim… she was an over-achiever, and the other guys she'd dated were too. Mankey, he still spat that name for some reason, was an accomplished artist. Eric, even though he’d been a syntho-drone, was well spoken and rode and worked on his own motorcycle. Even the boy Kim had locked braces with years ago had gone on to be the captain of the debate team and the president of the Beta Club. Why shouldn’t she want Ron to be more accomplished to? It was a natural thing to her, and not something that she should be ashamed of wanting. Hell, Kim deserved the best; which was why Ron jealously guarded her when boys came calling, even before he’d ever thought himself worthy of her.

 

He knew, though, that try as she might; Kim wasn’t going to make him into a Josh or an Eric. The newly crimson ninja who still had her back to him didn’t try, or even want him to change. She was very happy to be near him the way he was now.

 

There was this new physicality. Leave aside for the moment that Yori had been forcing herself on him for days, and had violated him tonight… The beautiful asian woman was making Ron tingle. There was fire in her kisses, and she inspired that in him, loathed though he was to admit it right now. Kim was also a gorgeous woman, and had been the stuff of a few of his sexual fantasies, definitely.

 

Yet the truth of it was; she didn’t get him aroused like he had been the last few days. Her kisses were nice, but chaste, almost perfunctory. In all honesty he didn’t look at her with so much lustful avarice recently. He had when he was younger- ish. But now he was beginning to think that maybe that was because she was the only pretty girl who ever paid attention to him. Those lustful thoughts about Kim had come and gone pretty quickly in his life, and really, a small part of him always felt guilty about thinking of her like that any way.

 

Yori, on the other hand… When he looked at her, even that first time in Japan… well she struck him dumb. She did even now, with her disguised hair and alien eyes. He felt a rush of blood to both his face and to his lap when he looked at the exotic ninja that he didn’t feel so much when looking at Kim. Maybe that rebellious part of him wasn’t so rebellious? Was it telling his brain something that his heart and his loins already seemed to know?

 

His train of thought was derailed as he realized that Yori had progressed from just kissing his hand, and was repeating her early actions with her mouth now on his finger. Suppressing a shudder of both unease and pleasure, he gently pulled his hand away from her grasp and sighed.

 

Yori, who was enjoying the feeling of Ron’s warm arm against her shoulder and neck, and was getting lost in her attentions to his fingers, whined softly and then looked down when Ron pulled away. There was a war on within her as well and worshipping the boy’s hand was helping distract her from it.

 

In fact, if Ron and Yori could talk about the situation like adults, they’d be surprised at how similar their dilemmas were; a question of what the mind understood, and what the heart wanted. Of course, owing to Ron’s innocence and to Yori’s affliction, neither could look on what was happening between them very rationally.

 

Yori though, was having a more realistic dilemma than Ron. Her mind was literally at war with itself. After the events of earlier that evening, her educated and contemplative self was assured that she really was out of control. She had attacked some people, insulted others, including her beloved sensei; and made a midnight flight across the pacific ocean on a whim. These were not rational behaviors, she knew.

 

Yet, when that part of her mind analyzed these things, another part piped up. It insisted that each and every one of these acts was justified. Fukushima had deserved to be attacked, and dissuaded from pretending to be an honorable man. Sensei had to be called out for shielding the dog. She NEEDED to come to Ron when she had fled the Dojo, because he was a good person and could protect her. Kim had to be attacked, forced to stop polluting Ron-sama with her twisted and misplaced affections. Really, she was more like that Shego person than she cared to admit; even Yori could see that.

 

Paramount was her love for him. Both aspects of Yori agreed that she was in love with the silly blond American. Again though; the internal war. The educated, studious, honorable Yori insisted that she had missed her chance; and as was proper, must step aside and allow the victor to claim Ron. The impulsive unstable Yori, however, felt wholly justified in doing anything she could to win Ron, up to and including attacking Kimberly-san and in convincing Ron with her mouth and hands by igniting his desire.

 

Add to that the fact that in the last few weeks and months she was becoming increasingly aware of what those feelings she had for Ron did to her, and why she felt the way she did about him in parts other than her heart, and Yori’s impulsive side had a definite advantage. The ninja warrior was no fool. She understood the concepts of love and longing… all too well in fact. They were both the subjects of epic poetry, and things she felt most days when she thought of Ron-sama.

 

Yet Akematsu Yori had lived a sheltered life in a dojo high in the mountains since she'd been about six. Simple concepts like her sexual maturity, the way her body had filled out, especially in the breasts and hips, and the very idea of being “horny” were fairly well foreign to her. She understood the mechanics of her body, of course; but putting together physiological symptoms with emotions and desires escaped her far longer than “normal” teenagers. It wasn’t until she’d gone into the outside world on assignments, and met others, that she began understanding why it was that her loins ached when she imagined Ron in his black shinobi shozoku.

 

This was powerful ammunition for the impulsive side of Yori because those desires and sensations could get quite annoying, and that part of her instinctively knew how to sate them and who with, while the educated Yori instead chose to ignore or outright deny them. So when she got horny, in the last few days, being so close to Ron, the educated Yori found it almost impossible to combat the impulsive Yori, and felt greatly ashamed for it.

 

Sighing heavily, mimicking Ron’s sigh, she clasped he hands in her lap for a moment, and then carefully rose from her sheiza pose. The blush of desire that had driven her to place her mouth on him had faded. When she had dyed her hair and snuck back to his home, she had not intended to do such an intimate thing. Though on seeing the object of her desires lying in his bed, mostly unclothed, her mouth had watered, her body had ached, and her heart had cried out, and she had given over to that improper lust.

 

Rising quietly to her feet, she knew that the desire for more was still there, hence her unconscious –suckling on Ron-sama’s hand. Yet it had faded some, and was also now far out-weighed by her shame in herself. Best she excuse herself now, before the one once more exceeded the other. “I should go, Ronald-sama. Please lock your door and window against my concern so that I do not dishonor you or Kimberly-san further.”

 

Ron, whose hand was still slick with her saliva where he had just pulled it from her, looked up, obviously befuddled. He didn’t understand where the words came from, but he was not able to pull them back from the air once they were out.

 

“You don’t have to leave…”

 

The way Yori’s face lit up was hidden from Ron, as her back was still to him; but the way she practically bounced in anticipation reinforced the part of him that had spoken. Again he found words leaving his mouth, not certain that they were really his. “You can stay here with me. I know you don’t have anywhere else to really go,” this time, at least, he was able to get a verbal handle on them and qualify what he meant. “Um, as long as you sleep in Hana’s room on the nanny-bed.”

 

The way Yori’s shoulders fell like leaden weights got that mysterious part of Ron speaking again as his heart sank, and this time, he gave up on controlling it. It was late and he was exhausted. He gave a relenting sigh and moved over to one side of his bed. “Okay, you can sleep here… just… no more of… what you just did. Or anything else.”

 

“We definitely have to talk about that tomorrow,” he added more quietly as the little ninja curled up tightly next to him and drew the covers cross both of them like a suit of armor against reality.

 

 


	16. “Awakenings”

Kim was experiencing one of the deepest, most comfortable sleeps she could remember, and she really didn’t want to be disturbed from it. Unfortunately, someone was coughing and clearing their throat, making it difficult for her to remain dead to the world. She clutched Pandaroo to her chest and shimmied back against the warm body behind her, smiling faintly and trying to remain unconscious on any meaningful level.

 

Wait a minute! Pandaroo should be the _only_ warm body she felt. The bottomless embrace of sleep rapidly began to evaporate, much to her dismay, to be replaced by a dull panic. A sleepful frown crept over her features and she reached back, feeling the warm form behind her. Her palm came to rest on a warm, firm swell, and as sensation slowly seeped into her mind, Kim began to distinguish between warm skin and smooth cotton.

 

As her hand moved, her brain slowly began processing what it felt, and finally a word came to be associated with the swell beneath her hand, _‘hip.’_ A moment or so later, she felt somnolent movement behind her; and a feminine sigh as someone snuggled closer to her. She felt Lunabat pressed between her shoulder blades and suddenly things started snapping into place. _‘The guest room. Shego’s hip. SHEGO’S BED!’_

Last night, after her long, cold shower, Kim had stumbled into first her pajamas, and then her bed. The cold shower had calmed her down quite a bit from the… events… in the kitchen, and brought back the exhaustion she had felt when she’d gotten home. Despite being cold, or perhaps because of it, she had curled up beneath the comforter with nary a thought and quickly had fallen into that gray area between wakefulness and sleep. There she had stayed for untold minutes, awake, but not lucid. Ethereal thoughts drifted in and out of her head and kept her from slumber; thoughts from random places, but always unpleasant, and usually related to missions.

 

Finally she realized the problem. Shego had stolen her sleeping partner last night; the stuffed Pandaroo that was her security blanket. Darn it! It was still in the thief’s room. Well, only one thing to do about that.

 

Kim shuffled down the hall to the guest bedroom. Thanks to the nightlight that Shego had apparently put in to aide her own eyesight problems, she saw the stuffie laying beside Shego’s bed on the nightstand. Wandering over, she sat down heavily on the edge of the guest bed and picked up her best inanimate friend, clutching it to her chest and feeling a deep sense of relief just by its contact. Profound exhaustion set in along with the relief, and Kim laid down where she was, unable to muster the conscious thought or muscle movement needed to carry her back to her own room. She snuggled backwards towards the warmth she felt from Shego, and didn’t even bother to draw up the tossed aside sheets before sleep fully claimed her.

 

Removing her hand from the taller woman’s hip, Kim rubbed her face and groaned very faintly. Okay, this was not the drama. She could simply slip out of bed and go back to her room before anyone was the wiser. No one needed to know she had ever been here.

 

In a few minutes any way. She was warm and very comfortable right now, so leaving could wait just a few more minutes. That dark, bottomless sleep rapidly began to reclaim the redhead and she tucked one hand up under the pillow, again snuggling down. Then the coughing and clearing of throats resumed.

 

Kim groaned faintly and sighed as she was again dragged back from blissful unconsciousness. A faint frown rolled over her features, and she wondered how she had slept so soundly if Shego was such a troublesome bedmate. Finally, though, her ears came awake enough to alert her to the fact that Sheshona’s breathing was slow, shallow, and untroubled. With a slowly growing sense of dread, Kim managed to force one olive eye open, and turned it painfully towards the source of the coughing and throat-clearing; two parental shaped blurs at the bedroom door.

 

When she managed to get one of the parental blurs in the focus of her vision, it said those seven words that had always struck fear into her very core, “Kimberly Anne Possible, we need to talk.”

 

“oh crap.”

 

\-----

 

Doctor Angelica Possible, Anne, had woken up that morning from a fitful dream-ridden sleep and wandered down the stairs to the kitchen for God’s Own Medicine, also known as coffee. After she had about a half a mug in her, she realized that her normal morning partner in crime was missing. Kim was usually up at about the same hour as she was, and helping decimate the first pot or so of caffeine.

 

Sighing, she remembered that Kim had left in a rage last night. She also touched her lips, trying to speak after recalling what her daughter had said when she left. No such luck. She was still on “shut up” duty. With mild irritation at her daughter’s tantrum, she moved around the kitchen, opening the door to the garage. Anne was struck with a concerned sense that her daughter may not have even come home last night, and wanted to verify it.

 

No, Kim’s purple car was there in its stall next to the station wagon. Rubbing her face, and remembering that Kim and Ron and their house guest had a very important mission this morning, Anne made her way up stairs to wake her troublesome progeny. She worked to shake off a few of her bizarre nightmares from the previous evening along the way, at least one of which had involved Kim.

 

She was a bit concerned to find Kim’s bedroom door open, unusual since Kim preferred it closed always; and usually locked, owing to the younger redhead’s tendency towards night terrors and sleep walking these last few years. Stepping in to the bedroom, she looked around concernedly. Kim's bed was its usual tossed state, but no one was in it, not even Pandaroo.

 

Anne checked Kim’s hamper, a trick she had learned after Kim started going out on early morning missions, but found her daughters mission clothes from the previous night still inside. She also found a slightly damp towel, which ruled out going to check the bathroom to see if Kimmie was showering already for her day.

 

Rubbing her face softly and trying to fight off a growing concern, Anne worked to concentrate. About this time, James came up behind her, hugging her, and noting her concern.

 

“What’s wrong dear? Kimmie got your tongue?” He chuckled softly at his own joke, kissing her on the cheek and peeking in to his daughter’s room.

 

Anne didn’t reply for a moment, one of her nightmares from the previous evening jumping back to her with urgency. She had written it off as just a bad dream, owing to its absurdity; and to the fact that being a caffeine addicted surgeon who often pulled nineteen hour days or more between rounds of sleep meant that she tended to have sleep deprivation and bizarre dream visions anyway.

 

But maybe… Maybe she really had seen her daughter bent backwards and passionately kissing her arch foe, when she’d come down for a glass of water and an aspirin in the small hours of the morning.

 

She shook her head at her husband, unable to respond verbally to his jest, and proceeded with growing concern, and irritation, down the hall to the guest bedroom. She opened the door and looked in, frowning as her despairing premonition was confirmed. Well, at least they were still covered.

 

She cleared her throat irritably, the most noise she could muster, and frowned as she tapped her slippered foot on the hardwood floor. Behind her, James looked in as well, just in time to see his innocent daughter caress the hip of the wanted criminal behind her and then sigh. A distinct frown darkened and etched his face and he too cleared his throat, coughing.

 

When he saw his daughter open an eye and look towards them, he issued his edict, “Kimberly Anne Possible, we need to talk.”

 

“oh crap.”

 

\-----

 

Across the suburb, Ron’s sleep was coming to a much less gentle and no less troubling end. Something was bouncing up and down on his chest. It weighed a lot more than Rufus, and was giggling in a very girlish manner.

 

“Ron-kun! It’s time to wake up! You must eat breakfast!”

 

Ron squeezed his eyes shut more tightly against the intrusion on his sleep and sighed. Suddenly, though, he felt warm breath right against his nose and mouth. That breath was… minty fresh?

 

“Ron, I know you are awake. It is time for you to get up…” the weight on his chest, otherwise known as Yori, suddenly stopped bouncing, and dropped her voice an octave or two to a sultry note.

 

“Oh god…” it all came rushing back to Ron… Why Yori was here, laying on top of him, and why her mouth was fresh with the smells of toothpaste and mouthwash.

 

More precisely, he remembered why she would _need_ to use mouthwash. This knowledge had a unique effect on Ron. The lower half of his body immediately started readying itself for sex at the memory, making his pulse race and his blood rush. The upper half of his body felt sick with regret and uncertainty about what had happened. Groaning, he pushed her away gently and sat up in bed, trying to ignore everything for the moment and tune the world out.

 

That failed as the blond boy felt the onyx eyes of the ninja upon him. Again he could almost sense the hurt they would reflect as he shifted uncomfortably on the bed. _‘Must be the monkey magic.’_ The boy thought to himself as he sighed. It didn’t occur to Ron that “boy” no longer applied to him in the sexual sense; or that sensing that hurt was something anyone would be able to do given what went between he and Yori the last two days.

 

Breathing out resignedly, he felt thankful at least that he wouldn’t have to try to sneak Yori out past his now-absent family. They still asked questions, some very insinuating ones, if Kim fell asleep on the couch after a mission, even though Ron always stayed upstairs in his attic room, and usually far out-slept Kim, who would be found on the couch by his parents, fully clothed as always. Still, he would get supposedly “knowing grins” from his father, and concerned looks from his mother; especially now that they had Hanna to watch out for as well.

 

Finally, Ron turned back to his “guest” and tried to swallow the swirl of emotions at the back of his throat, which were only reinforced by seeing Yori’s dyed hair and mission clothes. He knew that the clothes had not been her idea, Wade had given Kim’s old backup mission garb to the ninja as a more practical alternative to her silk dress the previous day. Well, at least she had stayed clothed during the night. Lord knew she could have changed into or out of far more suggestive clothing-

 

Ron groaned as his mind threw one such alternative at him full force. There was Yori, clothed in his dark red Middleton Ice Sharks hockey jersey, the one he wore almost every day, and nothing else. Well, except that innocent smile. A stupid, content grin slid over the young man’s features for a moment, and he sighed with relaxation. Then he realized what he was doing and groaned, shaking his head at himself.

 

_Beep beep ba beep_

 

Ron felt profoundly grateful to be saved by the bell, so to speak, and pulled the old-style blue kimmunicator to him like a life preserver. “Go Wade!”

 

His eyes drifted to Yori as he waited for the response, and he blinked. Had her face just… twitched? No, must be his sleep-fouled eyes.

 

\-----

 

Kim, who had just succeeded in rousting Shego from a stubborn sleep, felt similarly saved from the unpleasant conversation ahead of her when her kim’com beeped.

 

“Oh shit… tell your nerd just five more minutes, huh Kimmie?”

 

Kim made a scowling face at Shego, who apparently either wasn’t awake enough to question Kim’s presence in her bed, or just didn’t mind. Holding up her hand for silence from Sheshona; plus mom, who had just leaned irritably back into the guest room to see why the girls were not contritely following them, she answered. “’Sitch me Wade… Please.”

 

She was a little surprised to see her screen split in two, with a shirtless Ron beside the normal visage of Wade. “Um… hi Ron. Morning.”

 

The redhead rapidly turned away a bit on the bed to hide the other occupant from the kimmunicator’s camera and hoped she wasn’t blushing as intently as she felt like. “So… Wade?”

 

“Yeah, good morning Kim, Ron… Got your itinerary lined up. Since We can’t split the four of you up, or trust Shego and Yori to stay behind; and you can’t be in two places at once. I think you’d probably better go to Global Justice first, and then to Drakken’s lair.”

 

“What the hell! We’re going to Dr. D’s shit hole first and that’s tha- Mppphh” Shego’s protestation was muffled when Kim slapped her hand over the older woman’s mouth and thrust her head back down onto the pillow.

 

Being rewarded with a death glare from the Mediterranean woman, but no further struggling or vocalizations, Kim sighed and returned her attention fully to her wrist com, which was dangling from her other fingers.

 

That was, until she felt a very warm, wet, and surprisingly nimble tongue slowly tracing a pattern across her palm. Caught somewhere between an angry shout and a surprised moan, her response came out in a startled squeak and she yanked her hand back from the now grinning thief. “Damn it Shego! Behave yourself!”

 

Shego groaned audibly, but of course, she was compelled to do just that. Across the room, Kim’s parents also tried to restrain themselves. Anne was distinctly not-happy because she could tell just by Sheshona’s expression what she had probably done, given the way the dangerous woman was licking her lips now. James was of a like mind, and further perturbed by his daughter’s suddenly foul mouth.

 

When she finally felt she was assured of no further interruptions from anyone, Kim sighed and returned her attention yet again to the screen. “Okay Wade, I agree. Plus, we can pick up extra gear at GJ if we need it.”

 

“I was thinking the same thing. See if you can get Dr. Director to loan you one of those Hover Jets of theirs, since it will be faster than hitching a ride on Pop Pop Warner’s burrito blimp.”

 

On his side of the conversation, Ron was doing, unknowingly, the same thing that Kim was doing; trying to get his bed-mate to behave herself. Yori was trying to move so she could sit in his lap. Ostensibly to better see the kimmunicator screen, but more because the less controlled part of her had noticed his body’s reaction to her, and she wanted to encourage it.

 

Ron worked on keeping her at bay, and she finally contented herself to resting her head on his shoulder and looking at the screen, though she frequently found her cheek and mouth being pressed away by his palm when she got too close for his comfort.

 

“Awwwe, but the blimp would be so much more fun! And roomier too if I remember.” Ron whined slightly. Still he had to agree with Kim and Wade, faster, in this case, was definitely better.

 

Yori, at this point, managed to suggest something useful, even though her face was a bit distorted by the force of Ron’s palm trying to prevent her sucking his earlobe. “Perhaps your sensei Director will have better intelligence on the distribution of Doctor Drakken’s most dishonorable products?”

 

“OH yeah! I forgot to tell you guys that-,”

 

“That Martin Smarty agreed to yank all the Drak-co stuff from his store shelves when he found out who made them?” Wade interrupted Ron as he adjusted a few controls on his computer terminal, I know, I called him and asked him to do that, only to find out you had already talked to him, thanks for that, Ron. All of his outlets should have them recalled by now.”

 

“Yup… five-thousand locations worldwide with a new one opening each week; this week, East Timor!” Ron grinned at having been complimented for doing something right.

 

Kim was a bit frazzeled at the moment to notice anything about Yori when she occasionally appeared on the screen, because she was trying to figure out how to tell Ron about the previous evening’s events. “Good idea Yori, though I wouldn’t exactly call Doctor Director our Sensei… She’s more like the local Daimyo. And thanks for that Ron… way to work your connections.”

 

Compartmentalization was one of Kim’s strong points, so at this moment she was pushing the emotional maelstrom she felt to one corner of her brain while she slipped in to mission mode. This caused her to realize something, “What if Global doesn’t have any unaffected pilots?”

 

From her reclined, cat-like position, Shego piped up, “They still fly those Desalt model 702 hover-jets?”

 

Wade, who, unlike the rest of the team, was picking up on _every_ distraction that Shego, Yori, and Kim's parents were providing, struggled to get himself back on track and recall what it was that GJ flew, “Erm… yeah, they do Shego.”

 

“No Problem. Those things use the same flight systems that the Aerobus A380’s use. You could be brain dead, from a flight training standpoint, and still fly them. Hell, I bet even the bufoo-, erm Ron, could get us to Drakken’s cave in one. So I, as a trained pilot, can fly one no sweat.” She smirked triumphantly as she languidly stretched, not bothering to tug down the tight pink tank-top Kim had given her to sleep in as it threatened to ride up. She grinned even wider when Kim's father politely turned away to avoid staring at her, “After all, I _did_ steal the prototype A380 last year, didn’t I? It’ll be fun to fly something smaller and more responsive.”

 

Kim sighed heavily. She was already feeling pretty well conflicted, trying, like her father, not to stare at the way Shego displayed herself; and being reminded that the woman she was having… feelings about was an unrepentant criminal, wasn’t helping. On her kimmunicator screen she saw Ron’s head shoved aside, to be replaced by Yori’s, and she chose to focus on the girl’s black and white eyes nearly filling that half of the split-screen, rather than the statuesque mercenary who was now searching for her catsuit across the room.

 

“I, too, am a capable pilot, Wade-bozu. I will provide my assistance.” she nodded eagerly before Ron managed to force his way back into the focus of the com’s lens.

 

“Okay, add that to the list of ‘things we didn’t know about Yori.’” Kim shook her head. There was a faint note of bitterness in her voice, but she pushed it to the same place she had pushed the kissing Shego issue, “So, ride time Wade?”

 

Again, Wade had to work to reroute himself from watching his full screen views; one of Yori again trying to maul Ron’s ear, the other of Kim and her deep green eyes furtively darting around at whatever was off screen. “Oh… yeah… twenty minutes, Middleton Regional Airport.”

 

“Whoo hoo... commercial.” Shego twirled her finger listlessly in the air to add to the underwhelmed tone of her voice.

 

The conference call ended and everyone slipped fully in to suit-up mode. Kim scrambled past her parents and down the hall to her room to find her gear. Shego finished pulling on her catsuit, but archly eyed her bandaged left palm, debating what to do about both it, and the larger issue of her absent abilities. Then she looked up and caught sight of the Possible parents watching her just as archly with the same “what are we going to do with you” look in their eyes.

 

Sighing, the formerly malachite mercenary shook her long hair out, “Look… nothing happened, okay?!” She bit back her additional response about Princess being legal for such things in this state; considering the stories she had heard about how protective her nemesis’s father was and the kind of technology he had access to. “And I’m not sure if I even want something to happen, or if it’s Kimmie’s phere-hormonal-ness working on me, kay?”

 

The continued parental silence was more than a little unnerving, even to the hardened criminal. Then she stared at Kim’s mother and saw the note-pad still in her hand, “Hey Kimmie!!! I think you forgot something!”

 

There was an irritated grunt from the wall, which meant that Kim’s closet apparently shared a wall in common with the guest room, “What?!”

 

“Your poor, saintly mother?!” Sheshona gave the older redhead a meaningful glance as she waited for a response from the talking, and now thumping wall as Kim apparently hopped on one foot to pull her pants on.

 

“Yeah? Oh… OH! Um… Sorry mom! You can talk again!” came the muffled response through the shared wall.

 

“…’bout damned time,” Anne muttered softly, rubbing her jawbone. “Um… thank you, Sheshona. But don’t think for one moment that we won’t be having a nice ling talk about this situation when you return from the mission.”

 

“And you _will_ be returning and not escaping or going immediately to jail. Is that clear young lady?” James Possible added for his wife in a _very_ fatherly tone that made Shego pause and swallow again.

 

\----- ----- ----- ----- -----


	17. “Cosmetic Damage”

The ride from Kim’s house was largely silent, which was unusual. In the past, when Shego had stayed at Kim’s, both as a villain and as Miss Go, it was hard to keep the two women from talking to one another. Even if it was limited to catty remarks and edgy banter, the foes always kept the noise level up when around one another.

 

Neither of the women wanted to address where they had found themselves this morning. Despite Shego’s nonchalance about waking up with Kim in her bed, she was uneasy about the abrupt changes in her feelings over the last few days. Contrary to the internet rumors, some of which she fostered herself for the sake of propaganda and furthering her goal of keeping Princess off balance, she’d previously had no interest in Kim as anything more than a foe and sparring partner. She was not interested in the so-called subtext that others insisted existed between the two of them, especially since Shego considered herself to be generally on the straight side of bisexual.

 

Kim was likewise disturbed and confused, but being behind the wheel she at least had something to distract her somewhat from it. Still, her gloved hands gripped the leather of the steering wheel more tightly than needed, and she occasionally chewed her lip as the navigated morning rush hour traffic. She also continually fidgeted with the car’s other controls, of which there were a lot, considering how heavily modified her Roth Coupe SL 2.0 actually was.

 

Finally Sheshona spoke up, realizing something as she watched Kim’s hand toying with the computer display and its in-built clock, “Kitten, Nerdlinger said twenty minutes and it’s been fifteen. Now, I know this little coupe of yours can put my McLaren Mercedes to shame, and it makes my jet-powered motorcycle look like a joke considering you ran down Motor Ed, who was driving a rocket ship at the time… So can we pick it up a bit?”

 

The Grecian mercenary was a little shocked at the expression that came over Kim's face after a tense moment. It could best be described as a feral grin. Kim actually licked her lips and flipped a few switches on the control board, a dangerous gleam in her eye.

 

“Yeah, it has been a while since I really put my foot down in this… what do you say we see what it can do?” Kim’s grip tightened on the wheel and her right foot suddenly moved to a second accelerator pedal that was hidden in a depression next to the more traditional one.

 

Shego barely had time to match the grin before she was pressed by G-forces back into her passenger seat and the world outside her window became a multi-colored blur. “You rock, Kimmie!”

 

_-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-_

Ron and Yori’s ride to the airport was similarly silent, but that was more out of necessity than lack of things to say. Like Kim and Shego, the ninja pair had little time left, especially after Yori had forced Ron to sit and eat the entire breakfast she had crafted. The breakfast was delicious, and consisted of salmon, rice, miso, chilled pickle slices, and an onigiri with a sweet strawberry slice inside it. Surprisingly, Ron wasn’t overly full despite all the food, especially the heavy rice dish, followed by the slightly sweet riceball. She was able to concoct all this before Ron woke up because Ron’s mom had been on an Asian foods kick the last few weeks.

 

With just a few minutes to go, he too had to utilize the “modifications” to his scooter. It still had the Kepler rockets installed on it from the Lil Diablo incident, but they had been largely unused since then, owing to the expense of rocket fuel on a Smarty Mart employee’s budget. Now, however, Ron had twisted the throttle all the way past its usual stop and the two of them were rolling towards the airport at somewhere north of one hundred miles an hour.

 

This made it hard to do anything but blink their watery eyes, since Ron’s pair of helmets for the scooter were just that, scooter helmets with open faces and not fully enclosed racing visors. Oh well, at least there were no bugs.

 

Ron also couldn’t object to the way Yori held on to him tightly about the waist and pressed her exposed face to the back of his neck as they rocketed down the streets and dodged traffic. A part of him wanted to object, but it felt just as good now with Yori as it had been that night that he and Kim had rode back from New Mexico after defeating the Diablo-bots. Kim never liked riding the scooter though, and now that she had a car, he was always the passenger.

 

The two of them continued swerving through traffic, and he felt glad that the Middleton PD knew not to pull them over when he had the scooter in rocket mode or when Kim was using the Sloth’s jet engines. Time was usually of the essence when that happened, and the cops knew better than to try to get in the way, thankfully. That or they generally couldn’t keep up with either vehicle.

 

_-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-_

 

Shego and Kim arrived at the airport gate Wade had specified right on time. The “gate” was actually a small hangar and ticket office on the edge of the airport property. They were a little surprised to meet Wade, in the flesh, waiting for them with what seemed to be a very expensive private jet.

 

“Wade?” Kim looked first to her usually virtual team mate, and then to the sleek yellow and blue Bizjet, “Care to explain?”

 

Rubbing the back of his neck, the chubby boy chuckled nervously, “Yeah… private charter… I couldn’t get anything else that went anywhere near Global Justice.”

 

Shego, meanwhile, was busy looking at the insignia on the tail, “Hey Kitten… I think you might want to look in to suing these guys for trademark infringement. Team Impossible, huh?”

 

“Oh god, tell me you didn’t, Wade…” Kim’s emerald eyes flashed and hardened at the memory of the formerly for-profit ‘heroes’ who had tried to run Kim and Ron out of ‘the business’ last year.

 

“Sorry Kim, I had to. They were the only ones who would do it pro bono.” Wade shuffled his feet and sighed, looking away from his newly blonde friend’s stare. “But, it’s only Crash Cranstin today. Dash and Burn are off doing a Children’s Hospital charity gig.”

 

With at least this small concession to soothe her, Kim boarded the plane, leaving Wade and Shego to follow up the narrow steps. Hearing a distant but growing roar, Sheshona turned to see a tiny silver dot on the horizon. She watched it grow until it was clear that it was the buffoon’s scooter, with he and his erstwhile ninja astride it. When the two actually arrived and dismounted the bedraggled Vespa clone, Shego was struck slightly dumb and reached out, tugging Wade’s shirt.

 

“Hey, turbo-nerd… nerdlinger… hey, dial-a-geek!?”

 

“Shego, I have a name…” Wade sighed. He may have adopted Shego’s original moniker for him as a handle, but some of her pet names could get a little annoying in his opinion.

 

“Whatever… Could you scan me and see if Drakken’s stuff is affecting my brain?”

 

Wade was busy consulting his latest toy, a modified Banana “ePhone,” and scowled at the interruption and her continued tugging on his shirt, “I’m already sure it isn’t Shego… but why do you ask?”

 

“Because either I’m hallucinating,” Shego physically grabbed Wade’s head and turned it to face the approaching pair, “or Ron hired a stunt double for Kimmie from TV Nippon.”

 

“What are you- Whoa!”  The chubby little hacker blinked and watched as Yori removed her helmet and tossed her cranberry hair slightly. With a nervous swallow, he actually backed away and retreated up the steps to the jet, “Um… Kim is not going to be happy, is she?”

 

“Not if she’s ever seen Single White Female, she isn’t…”

 

In the light of day, Shego found herself studying the now red headed ninja intently, much more so than she had the previous night during the little cat fight at Kimmie’s house. She could suddenly understand why the geisha had given Kim such trouble.

 

Yori was dressed still in Kim’s older style mission clothing; consisting of a stylish belly-baring black turtleneck and khaki colored cargo pants, with sneakers and a yellow utility belt. On Kim the clothes had looked cute, in Shego’s impression; like a little girl playing dress up. The ninja, however, made them look a lot less like a fashion statement and a lot more like the tactical gear they were intended to be; especially given how her abs were clearly sculpted out, as were her exposed forearms. Her muscular legs also were more visible since they filled out the baggy cargos much more than Kitten’s slightly more slender cheerleader legs did.

 

Even to the hardened merc, it was a little intimidating to watch the way Yori moved and carried herself in the early morning Colorado sunshine, particularly since ninja weren’t generally known for strutting around in broad daylight the way she was. She moved with a cool confidence and power that Sheshona found disturbingly familiar, because it was the same way she very consciously carried herself. “Nope… she’s not going to be happy at all.”

 

“Hey Shego, are you going to board or- WHAT THE HELL?!” a familiar female voice called from behind her

 

“Oh yeah, this is going to be a fun flight…” the villainess sighed and drooped her shoulders, pressing up the embarkation ramp and pushing Kim back into the plane before all hell broke loose.

 

_-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-_

 

Twenty minutes in to the flight, most young men would be thrilled to be setting between a blonde superhero cheerleader and a Japanese ninja hottie, both of whom were clinging to his arms. Most people, however, weren’t Ron Stoppable; trapped between a very territorial Kim Possible and a slightly unstable Yori Akematsu. He could almost feel the waves of irritation rolling between the two girls, who were taking turns glaring at each other not so subtly behind his back as they clutched at his arms. At least they weren’t trying to tear him in half any more.

 

That didn’t mean that they weren’t still making him very uncomfortable. At least Kim hadn’t started screaming or swearing, like he’d thought she was going to when he’d seen the look in her green eyes upon bringing Yori on to the jet. Likewise, he was glad Yori hadn’t tried to decapitate her, despite the way she tensed and brought tiger-like hands to bare when Kim had shouted from the door of the jet.

 

“Heh heh… So, how about those Ice Sharks? Heh…” Ron tried to shrug out of the girls’ grips, but they both clung possessively to him.

 

“Yeah, how about those Ice Sharks, and their _red_ Jerseys… Ron?”green eyes narrowed and glared daggers behind Ron’s shoulders at the shinobi and her dyed hair.

 

Ron swallowed nervously. “Um… heh… yeah, sure are nice jerseys.”

 

“Ah, yes… like Ron-kun’s over-shirt. It seems so comfortable. May I get one Ron?” If possible, Yori clung even more tightly to his left arm as she spoke.

 

“Oh, why not just wear his? I mean, that’s what you want, isn’t it? To cover yourself in his scent like a bi-,”

 

“Kimmie!”

 

All three teens jumped at the harshness in Shego’s tone, “Be civil. We all have to do this together if we all want to get back to normal.”

 

“Did she just sound like…” Ron began after a moment’s pause, turning to his partner, the once-redhead Kim.

 

“Miss Go? Yeah… kind of sounded like.”

 

“OH god... Please don’t even joke…” Shego rolled her disguised eyes and grumbled, “I’ll be up in the radar area with Nerdlinger… _Don’t_ make me come back here and separate you three… unless it’s kinky, then just try to keep the screams to a minimum.”

 

“Shego!” Kim’s face rapidly transformed to match the color that her hair used to be as she glared after the retreating mercenary.

 

“Ron-kun? What would be kinky about separating the three of us?”

 

“God you’re dense.” Kim growled and looked after the door Shego had just passed through. Suddenly she not only wanted to cling to Ron, and also wanted to go through the door.

 

Yori pondered a moment longer and then gasped softly apparently catching up with the rest of the group to Shego’s entendre. “No! nononono! Not my Ron-kun! And not with you, or the other doragon fujo!”

 

Kim gasped and tightened her grip on Ron’s arm, her nails digging in slightly, “I am _not_ a dragon witch! Shego maybe, but not me!”

 

The freckled boy sighed, sinking further between the two young women clinging to him and trying not to make any sudden moves that might cause one or both to spontaneously combust.

 

_-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-_

 

In the center section of the jet, where all of Dash Demond’s expensive electronics equipment was located, Shego sat down heavily in one of the two chairs and groaned loudly. “God… fighting over the buffoon like two little kids over the best toy… I can’t believe I actually kissed her.”

 

She didn’t realize she’d said it out loud until she looked up to see the look on Wade’s face. She growled menacingly as she watched the look transit from shock to avarice. “You did _not_ just hear that. Understand, turbonerd?”

 

“Oh, I heard it all right… The guys on the net are going to freak…” Wade was already turning to face his terminal, fingers at the ready; until he felt Shego’s hands grip the back of his chair and spin him back to face her. Even without the plasma powers and unearthly green skin, the chubby boy found her very frightening all of the sudden.

 

“Let me make something perfectly clear to you cocoa-dweeb, what Kimmie and I did is between me and Kimmie, and maybe her parents if I survive this mess, got it? None of your little cyber buddies who keep making those bad photoshops… ESPECIALLY the one with the ice cream cone… need to hear about this.”

 

Wade, though intimidated, was not sufficiently dissuaded, “Well, even if I didn’t _really_ _want_ to tell the Goki Smash Cavern gang all about how half their ideas at least were right, it’d still be my duty to let people like Doctor Director know… and especially Ron. I think he’d like to know his girlfriend kissed you.”

 

“I didn’t say those things they say on Goki are true, it’s probably just Kimmie’s ‘alterations’ working on me.” Shego sighed, and then after a moment looked more menacingly at the hacker, “Let’s try this a different way. If you tell a soul what you heard me say? I’m going to tell Kim, _and_ _her parents_ , all about the naughty web cam sessions you’ve been having with “Freckles14” in Montanna. Capiche?”

 

“You wouldn’t,” Wade paled noticeably despite his dark skin, “I didn’t- I don’t- It’s not what you- How did you even know about that?!”

 

Shego grinned dangerously and moved to release Wade’s chair and settle back in her own. “Let’s just say you have your secrets and I have mine… and if you want to keep it that way, you’ll keep your mouth shut and your fingers off the mouse.”

 

Wade watched her for a long moment for any hint at all that she was bluffing. Finally he sighed and shook his head, convinced she’d do it, just to spite him if nothing else. “Fine... your secret is safe with me. But don’t come looking for me if someone _else_ finds out, got it?”

 

“I’d like to think I can keep a secret Nerdlinger... After all, you still think that’s the real Mona Lisa in the Louvre, right?” She smirked a bit more playfully and pulled out her trusty nail file, “Oh, and one more thing… send her flowers. I don’t care how cowgirl she is, girls like flowers.”

 

_-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-_

 

An hour later they were exiting the well-disguised hangar at Global Justice headquarters, with Shrgo and Ron strategically walking between Kim and Yori, who were practically spitting and clawing at each other with their ears folded back by this point. Shego made a point to occasionally make a smart remark at Kim to keep her off guard and not so focused on the Japanese woman, and Ron allowed Yori to hold his hand to keep her soothed.

 

The Grecian mercenary eyed Kim's hand slightly as they entered the main building of Global Justice’s North American headquarters and sighed. The perfect princess was really amped up for her left hand to be twitching back and forth like that. She was distracted when she was hit in the back of the neck by something warm and wet.

 

Groaning, Shego smacked at the spot, and came away with a small wet glob of paper. She turned about dangerously, just in time to see a very bald, née hairless, Will Du getting yanked around a corner via the ear by Betty Director.

 

“A freaking spit-wad? Glad to see GJ is keeping its tactics up to date there, Betts.” The dark haired woman snarked and flicked the paper booger away from herself in disgust.

 

“Can it, Miss Go. I have neither the time, nor the patience for your irreverent attitude at this juncture.” Doctor Director managed to keep her voice below a growl, but just barely as she tugged Agent Du along behind her. “William doesn’t seem to have received a full dosage of the Drakken formula, as he has not degenerated to infantalism like the president of Taiwan.  Presumably either he realized what the product was prior to full application, or Mister Lipsky’s products are unstable.”

 

Nodding in agreement of the assessment, Kim eyed the rather disturbing visage of the hairless half-chinese agent, who was still squirming in his supervisor’s grasp. “Probably a little of both. A few of my classmates have been hit with the items as well, with widely varying results, Doctor Director.”

 

Wade yanked on Ron’s sleeve, and the taller boy looked down, and then leaned down to hear a whispered question.

 

“Hey, Doctor Director… have you been feeling odd lately? You seem a little… aggressive right now.” Ron asked blindly, not sure why he was doing so, and instantly wilted under the steel gaze the Director focused on him from her surviving eye.

 

“In response to Mister Loade’s question, no, I have not been afflicted by Drak-co hygiene products.” She fixed the dark, rotund boy with an equally fearsome glance, and then focused it on Shego as if to ensure her silence before her next statement. “My concern with the coloring of my hair is limited only to Avondale hair products. I use nothing else to-,”

 

“Cover the gray in five minutes or less with one simple application?” Sheshona smirked and made a show of flipping her naturally brunette locks theatrically.

 

“To disguise my appearance and actual age to potential informants.” she continued after a moment of controlled breathing. “The effect of altering my few silvered strands is merely a beneficial by-product.”

 

“Yeah, whatever gets you through the night there, Betts. You’re what, seventy now?”  
  
“I always wondered what your actual age was, Doctor Director.” Kim questioned idly as she continued to study the effects inflicted on Will Du. She didn’t even intend it as a command, but apparently her ‘powers’ were growing in strength.

 

“I’ll be fifty thee years old next Wednesday…” a formerly hard brown eye blinked in utter confusion.

 

Shego merely smirked. “Yeah, don’t feel bad about it B.D. … She got me the same way on my name.”

 

“Oh! Happy Birthday Doctor D!” Ron grinned in a silly manner, until Kim, Shego, and Betty all glared sharply at him for no reason he could fathom. He quickly melted behind Yori and Wade for protection.

 

“Ron-kun... is it not poor form in western society to comment on a female sensei’s age?” the young ninja gently chided her beloved, but did shield him from the glares of the other three most dangerous women on Earth.

 

Dr. Director turned an eye, her only one, on Kim and raised her brow. She mouthed the words, “Ron-kun?”

 

Kim’s disgusted expression, and the way she yanked Ron out from behind the ninja said enough. The Director rolled her eye at teenage angst and moved to drag Will Du down the corridor by the ear. “If you will all follow me, I’ll show you what we have been able to deduce about these insidious products.”

 

“Awwwwe! But I dun want to go to a stupid briefing meeting with old iron panties! Briefings are boring!”

 

“WILLIAM!!!” If Betty’s eye opened any wider, it was likely to fall out of its socket.

 

The other people in the corridor could only, unsuccessfully, try to hide their amusement  and watch the look of shock and mortification cross Doctor Director’s face as she stared at her juvenile second in command.

 

Shego was, of course, the first one to crack, “Oh… I’ll have to remember that one… Problems with the subordinates there, Betts?”

 

Kim shook her flaxen head softly and tried not to break as well, but Shego’s outburst pushed her over the edge, “Oh my… out of the mouths of babes, huh?”


	18. “Free Fallin'”

Anne and James Possible sat at the breakfast table in silence. This morning had held a lot to digest, and it wasn’t even 8 A.M. yet. The newspaper rustled occasionally, but it was not actually being read. A cup of coffee was being sipped from, but it was not savoured particularly.

 

Finally, coffee and newsprint were set down as the Doctors Possible sighed in unison. “Dear, we need to talk about,”

 

They chuckled at starting in unison, and after a moment James made a gesture of deferring to his wife. “Please hon, go on.”

 

“Thank you dear. I’m worried about the influence Shego is having on Kimmie. I don’t think that all of her recent behavior is because of Drew’s concoction. Behavior is not all chemical after all.” The elder redhead sighed softly, swirling the last of the coffee in her mug and considering it. “And I think we both know why I don’t want our daughter hanging around with one of the world’s ten most wanted.”

 

The slightly graying rocket scientist nodded sympathetically and refolded his newspaper in a nervous display at where the topic was heading, “Hon, from what I’ve seen, I think that our Kimmie-cub is having an even bigger effect on Miss Go,”

 

“Shego, dear.”

 

“Thank you… Having a bigger effect on Shego than she is on Kim.” He paused, studying his wife’s face, remembering the same worn look she had on her face now was the one she’d had when he first met her some twenty five years before. “Besides, Miss Go…”

 

“Shego… Dear…” Anne corrected him again, a hint of irritability leaking into her voice.

 

“I’m sorry Hon. Shego was once a hero. She lost her way, just like others have if I remember correctly.” He smiled softly at his wife, “I think she’s a lot more like…”

 

A knock at the front door interrupted his reasoning and he frowned, “Now who could that be? My driver isn’t supposed to be here for a half hour yet.”

 

Anne nodded and sighed again, rising from the chair and heading for the living room and the front door. James reopened his newspaper in the meantime, flipping to the business news section at random and reading news of an heir to the Senior fortune turning up. “Hmmmm, I thought Kimmie had said that old Mister Senior had a son already?”

 

There was a prolonged silence, which prompted James to rise and lean out of the kitchen door and look across the house after a few minutes. He walked to the doorway between the kitchen and the family room in puzzlement.  A frown marred his features as he took in the scene in the suddenly crowded living room, “Hello, Drew…”

 

**_ -KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP- _ **

 

The trip to Global Justice had been largely a bust. Doctor Director had her hands full in keeping her agents under control, from the hairless and juvenile Will Du, to Hewlett and Belle Packard, the newlywed secretaries who had shared some body wash during a dirty shower and now could barely breathe on their own. Actually, Dr. Director hadn’t even known about the Smarty Mart angle until Ron had told her.

 

At least they had indeed picked up a Global Justice hover jet, which was now making its super-sonic way down to the Caribbean lair of Drew Lipsky, AKA Doctor Drakken. In the cockpit sat Sheshona E. Go, more popularly known as Shego; and Yori Akematsu, graduate of, and now probably outcast from, the Yamanouchi School.

 

In the rear with the gear were Kim Possible, Ron Stoppable, and Wade Loade. The ride, unlike the trip to Global Justice, was progressing fairly quietly now that Kim and Yori had been separated. The redhead-turned-blonde sat, seeming to inspect the fingernails of her left hand with some small amount of concern in her green eyes. The naturally blond boy sat across from her, banging away on what appeared to be a handheld videogame. In reality, it was the older version of the kimmunicator, the one with built in scanners.

 

The heavy-set, dark skinned boy was showing him how to use it to record results, since before they had just sent things immediately to him instead of saving them for later. Obviously getting Ron to learn how to take complex measurements was fighting an uphill battle. Still, progress seemed to be occurring, at least until a yellow light started flashing in the ceiling of the compartment.

 

“Awwwe Man! This tanks! I hate freefall…” Ron groused and stuffed the kimmunicator into his backpack.

 

“Stuff it, Ron.” Kim shook her hand irritably and tugged on her mission gloves as she stood up.

 

“Whoa… Chill KP… this will all be over by like night fall. Just take a few deep breaths, everything is bueno. Everything will be cool once we get the antidote.” Ron attempted to sooth his best friend and girlfriend, reaching out for a hug.

 

“Yeah?! Then what Ron? Everything will just be hunky-dory I guess. Everything goes back to the way it was?! Shego goes off to jail, Yori goes back to Japan, and we all live happily ever after?!”

 

The blond boy actually took a step back from the ranting hero and swallowed. The cockpit door swooshed open behind him and bonked him on the back of the head, “…owwwww!”

 

“What’s this about me going to jail?” Shego already had a chute on and pushed her way past the small door and the sidekick. “But ya know, given the choice between jail and Kimmie’s parents, I might actually choose cellblock F.”

 

“Why would Shego-san need to speak with the Possibles,” Yori slipped up from her co-pilot’s seat and began fastening the chute harness in place. “Ron-san?”

 

Ron ignored Yori’s query and did some quick mental math and looked among the two darkly dressed women, “Um, who’s flying the plane?”

 

“My good friend Otto, of course.” the tall woman smirked as she brushed unconcernedly past Ron again, towards the door.

 

“Otto? Who the fu- erm,” Kim grit her teeth, eyeing her nemesis-turn-whatever and taking a clipped breath. “Who the heck… is Otto?”

 

“Otto Piloté…” Shego smirked and tapped in a code for the floor-hatch that would let them all plummet out of the aircraft. “Nerdlinger… why don’t I see a chute on you yet?”

 

“Otto Piloté?” Kim blinked, a positively befuddled expression passing over her face as she shook out her left hand again and seemed to ponder.

 

After a moment, everyone turned to look at her, some concernedly. “Oh…! yeah… hardy har har Elsbeth.”

 

“Yeah… it’s true what they say about blonds, huh?” Shego gave a fraction of a second’s pause as well at Kim’s delayed response, and then shrugged. She scowled as she turned back to wade, “You! Chute! Now!”

 

“Why?!” he yelped, reaching for one, “I don’t usually skydive, or even go on missions unless we’re shorthanded!”

 

“Well, suck it up cocoa-puff, cause you’re going this time. I need all the hands I can get to keep the cat fights to a minimum, and I want you there to work the computers. It ain’t my strong point, and I don’t want to trust the buffoon with it either.”

 

“And what am I? Diced liver?” Yori snorted and kicked the panel in floor of the hover jet to mover it along faster, looking to her favorite Team Possible member for assistance.

 

“Yori? Why did you just… wink?” Ron shook his head and sighed… this whole sitch was just not bueno. He smiled cheerfully after a minute, “And it’s chopped liver. Do you know how to get around in Drakken’s computers?”

 

“No... I suppose not Ronnie-kun.” She pouted out after a moment, and tapped her foot waiting for the hatch to finish opening.

 

Kim snorted derisively as the rear cabin filled with a tornado of rushing air, “So we take Wade… Ronnie-kun.”

 

The tall woman rolled her eyes, and when they came back to center, she found Ron invading her personal space a bit closely. “Problem, Doofus?”

 

“I think that stuff is wearing off, you actually look a little green again.” He quipped, peering at her nose apparently.

 

She exhaled forcefully, and gently pushed him back, so as not to send him plummeting out of the hover-jet too soon. She smirked and gave a dismissive gesture with her free hand, “It’s all the estrogen in the air. I haven’t been around this many female hormones in a while, not since the last Women in Crime symposium.”

 

“Oh…” he nodded, digesting that fact, as well as the idea of a feminist crime movement. He found that bit difficult to process and just left it at that. “Cool. Okay… so um… the yellow light stopped blinking, I guess we-,”

 

He found himself plummeting, with a suspiciously boot-shaped bruise on his backside. Rolling around, he saw the jet rapidly falling away. He also saw four other shapes approaching him, well three approaching. The fourth, rounder shape plummeted gracelessly, lacking practice. That would be Wade.

 

Quickly enough, they were all in relatively close proximity. Then, almost in unison, all five young people pulled their chutes. Or rather that was what was supposed to happen. Four of the team pulled their cutes and came rapidly to a stop. The fifth, clad entirely in black, continued to plummet away from them at terminal velocity.

 

“Yori!” Ron and Wade screamed together, panicked as the ninja rocketed downwards, seemingly out of control.

 

Shego pursed her lips at what she had seen, and checked her altimeter. They were at a safe altitude, a little low, but not too much. She considered the situation with as much calm as could be had under the circumstances. Still, the concern in her eyes demonstrated she didn’t want to be landing to see the aftermath spattered all over the island’s south end.

 

Kim had, of course, been glaring directly at Yori at the appointed pull time. She had seen that the ninja had made no move to grab her D-ring.

 

“That showy little bitch!” As Shego, Ron, and Wade watched, Kim cut away her own main parachute and went tumbling after the shinobi, her mutterings fading into the distance.

 

“Ya know,” Shego mused into her helmet’s radio, “If you’re really lucky, Stoppable, one of them won’t pull in time and you’re problems will all be solved.”

 

Ron swallowed slightly at the prospect and then turned towards Shego as they drifted downwards, seeing first one, then the other orange backup parachutes erupt far below them at a perilously low altitude. “Or, if _you’re_ lucky, neither will make it and I’ll be left all alone for you.”

 

“Hey, Kimmie! Wait up!!!” Shego yelled suddenly, scrambling to cut her own main chute free at that prospect.

 

**_ -KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP- _ **

 

“You do realize Kimmie-cub will never let you get away with this, don’t you Drew?” The Mister Dr. Possible had a distinctly displeased look on his face as he was tied to the kitchen chair he had been voluntarily occupying earlier.

 

“Oh please James, call me Doctor Drakken,” the cerulean scientist corrected with a deadly and insane smile as he watched his henchmen finishing the knot-work.

 

“Why would I, Drew? You never actually earned that title; you ran off from school.” James made a show of struggling at his bonds, but he’d been tied up by Drew’s people before; at least this time there was no tentacle beast in a tank of water below him. “Just what is a _Drakken_ anyway?”

 

The blue-skinned madman made a dismissive gesture as he picked his way around the Possible’s kitchen, “And whose fault is that, James? Who ran me out of the university on the heels of my greatest creation? My first generation artificial intelligences?”

 

“You mean those mechanical street-walkers you called Bebe’s? You hadn’t even tested them!” Mr. Possible snorted derisively. “You couldn’t handle a little peer criticism and quit… don’t blame this on others, Drew.”

 

Drakken, though, seemed to have already moved on from this discussion and was eyeing Anne Possible. “I know you from somewhere…”

 

The Misses Doctor Possible snorted, struggling at her own bonds but finding them just as tight as the last time she too had been tied by Drakken’s people. “You should recognize me… Kimmie and I stopped you about two years ago. I believe your mother was there.”

 

“Ah yes, Kim Possible’s sister, Fran.” He thrust his finger into the air in triumphant, if incorrect, recollection. “You thought you were all that too, didn’t you Fran? Well, I certainly showed you.”

 

It was not the first time that Drakken had thought her Kim’s sister. Anne would have been flattered, if the man making the claim wasn’t a blubbering unhinged madman. She realized trying to correct him was futile and simply turned to her husband, her face communicating her estimation of Drew’s limited competence. “I’m beginning to wish we’d made Shego stay here, dear.”

 

“Yes, at least then we’d have someone adult to talk with while we waited for Kimmie-cub to return and wipe up this mess.” James saw the look in his wife’s eye, and that playful wryness at the edges of her expression that their daughter shared so often. He bit on it as something sane and familiar, given the situation.  “Tell me, Drew, why is it you can keep such a capable employee on your staff and constantly fail so badly against a teenage girl? Even if she is _my_ daughter?”

 

The azure madman sputtered and spun on James again, his attention distracted from where Stanislawz was finishing tying up Anne, “She was not competent! She failed me time and again! She admitted to me she actually respected that worthless daughter of yours! What competent villain respects their arch foe?!”

 

This little factoid arched James’s brow slightly, but he plunged on with his course of driving Drakken further up the wall. “Oh… so not only can you not take criticism, but you’re in the habit of hiring unreliable people as well… That explains quite a lot, actually.”

 

“No! She came with quite good references! Really!” Drew sputtered and gestured, trying to backtrack, “And the things that woman could steal!”

 

“Oh! So you just don’t know how to talk to women, even after all this time. My, how little things change.” Mr. Dr. Possible kept his eyes fixed on Drew’s beady ones, knowing that the ploy would be lost if he glanced at what he knew his wife of twenty years was doing on the other side of the kitchen.

 

“Stanislawz! Tape his mouth! I’ve had enough of this lippy- Oooomph!” Drew felt a coffee decanter smashed across his jaw and was sent stumbling.

 

Anne stood behind the sprawling doctor, the shattered remnants of her beloved coffee pot clutched in her hand. How she had got free was unclear as she was lacking her trusty laser scalpel. Unfortunately, she was tasered into submission by a stun-pole a second later, courtesy of Stanislawz.

 

Rising to his feet, blood dripping from his newly enlarged scar, Drakken scowled, “Tie her up again, and do a better job of it this time! You Henchco people are supposed to own the Pixie Scouts and the Tiger Scouts aren’t you? I’d think you’d know a thing or two about knot tying!”

 

**_ -KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP- _ **

 

Once Team Possible plus two was on the ground, things got moving. Wade, Ron, and Shego had landed at the edge of a clearing to find Kim and Yori a bit stung by their rapid descents, but otherwise none the worse for the wear. Kim was shaking out her hands and her feet, apparently having sprung them slightly hitting the ground. Yori was blinking her eyes and shaking her head, her hair full of leaves and twigs and cut harness straps dragging behind her.

 

Shego came out of the brush from one side, and paused when the others looked at her, “What? A girl can’t stop to use the bushes?”

 

“You were wiping your mouth.” Kim responded, looking at her fingerless gloves and shaking out her sprung hands a bit more before placing them on her hips. “That’s not usually what one wipes when exiting the bushes.”

 

“Hello? Canteen? It’s a tropical fucking rainforest! Very hot, even in late April, ya know?” She shook her head, holding up the offending container before tossing it aside, “And don’t worry Princess, it’s bio-degradable.”

 

“Guys, can we get on with this whole… thing? Being around all these bugs is killing me!” Wade interrupted with a whine, slapping his neck for effect, and relief.

 

“Yes, let’s…” The platinum leader shook her head once softly, and then again, and turned towards the castle-like lair they all knew and loathed. She kicked her left ankle a bit to loosen it and started up the worn path through the jungle.

 

A few moments later, they were inside the lair. This was accomplished with surprisingly little resistance, and via the front door at Shego’s suggestion. Ron, of course, worried that Kim was taking tactical advice from Shego considering they had gotten in here dozens of time without her help. But given the fact that they’d only encountered two Syntho’s, and it didn’t feel like a trap or a trap-trap to him, he was not voicing his concerns. 

 

As they snuck their way down a corridor, he felt someone digging in his backpack. Knowing that Yori was behind him only alleviated his panic a little, so he whirled, just to make sure that it really was her and not a Bebe, or a Synthodrone, or a Henchman. “Phew… Yori? What are you doing?”

 

“I was bored, Ronnie-kun.” she whined faintly, and winked at him again.

 

The blond boy ignored a few grumbles from the front of the line and sighed softly. The sooner Yori and Kim could be restored to their normal selves, the sooner he could try to get back to his normal, everyday world; which didn’t involve formerly green mercenaries, or child-like ninja, or even a blonde Kim. “If you’re bored, grab the old Kimmunicator… it’s got Metris on it.”

 

“Metris 2.4 actually,” Wade added from his spot at the center of the line, “and a few others… A shame I couldn’t load that stuff on the wrist com, but there’s just not room for all the proper controller buttons.”

 

“Yeah, that tanks, Wade. No more Orbitoid Prime on the way home from missions.”

 

“Speaking of Missions,” Kim growled through clenched teeth, “we’re on one right now… so how about some quiet time?”

 

She turned towards Shego and tapped her on the shoulder, “Hey, Greeny… where _are_ all the henchmen and whatnot, anyways?”

 

“Ya got me, Princess…” Shego shrugged a bit as they crept along, “I know Doctor D was having cash-flow problems… but there were definitely more than this when I left.”

 

“When he chased you off, you mean?”

 

“Not helping, Ron.” the former redhead sighed softly. She ran a gloved hand through her hair again, shaking it out when it emerged.

 

“And what’s with the greeny stuff, Pump- ?” Shego paused in her nicknaming and eyed the girl in beside her, “No, not Pumpkin any more… but yellow squash just doesn’t roll off the tongue… oooh, maybe Corn Silk? Yeah, Corn Silk.”

 

“Grrrr, what did I just say about _quiet time?_ ” came the reply at something less than a quiet volume. She clenched her fists slightly at her sides as they moved along through the unusually quiet lair. “And Ron’s right, you’re looking greener again, and sweating. I see what you mean about the humidity.”

 

Shego just grit her teeth, then licked her sweaty lips, “Yeah, Drak must be skimping on the AC to save a few shekels.”

 

"Guavatar: The Last Fruit Blender." Yori read from the small screen she was holding, and then looked confusedly at the object of her ardor, rubbing her forehead. "What is that Ron-san?"  


Kim snorted and spun, yanking the Kimmunicator from Yori’s grasp, eying its display as her face twitched with irritation in the light of the animation it was playing, "It's a kiddie show that he's been watching since he outgrew The Flippies. Damn it Ron! You stored this shit on the Kimmunicator?"  


"Kimmie," Shego sighed, turning from her position to face the blonde woman, "Not that I don't enjoy this edgy new you... But you’re the one demanding sneaky-time-quiet-stalking. Could you please, please make up your... Kim? Bubblebutt what's wrong? _KIM?!"_


	19. Shake Rattle and Roll

_“_ Kimmie? Bubblebutt what's wrong? _KIM?!"_

 

Shego watched in growing horror as Kim collapsed to the ground, the brightly flashing Kimmunicator skittering away on the stone floor of the lair’s main corridor. The mercenary dropped to her knees and clutched Kim up into her arms, trying to grasp what had suddenly gone so long.

 

The blonde’s body was stiff in her arms, muscles twitching and shivering beneath her skin. Her mouth was snapping open and closed, and her eyes had rolled back horrendously beneath fluttering eyelids. Shego looked around in a panic, trying to ignore the alien, strangled sounds that the hero was making as she shuddered and spasmed in her lap.

 

“Somebody help me!” she yelled in alarm as her eyes darted around. She gasped when they alighted on Ron. Yori was lying in his lap, back arching to an impossible angle as she too shuddered, a froth forming at the corner of her lips.

 

She looked to Wade, but the round geek seemed paralyzed, looking back and forth between the two couples and wringing his hands. She finally forced her eyes back on the blonde heroine in her lap and shook the girl, as though that would bring her out of her tremors. “Kim! Kim, come on! This is not funny!”

 

Biting her lower lip hard, Shego tried to calm herself, with limited success. Help wasn’t coming. She _was_ help. She made herself look over Kim’s trembling body. Her hands were clenched in fists, nails piecing her flesh.  Shego could feel the muscles in the girl’s flank twitching and firing in unnatural ways. She couldn’t bring herself to look again at the girl’s eyes, which were rolled back disgustingly in her skull.

 

“Okay… um… She’s having a seizure… What do I do for a seizure?!”  Shego took a deep breath and closed her eyes, trying to think back to her first aide training from years ago in Go City. “Yeah. Okay. Keep her from biting her tongue in half and drowning in blood.”

 

The thief remembered that swallowing one’s tongue was a myth. You couldn’t because it was attached to the front of your mouth. However, it was full of blood vessels and you could bite through it, choking on your own blood quickly. She looked around for anything she could put in Kim’s mouth. But sighed, finding nothing within easy reach. Well, that left pretty much one thing.

 

Shego grit her teeth, and then stuck the outside of her left hand into Kim’s clacking mouth. She hissed and winced as the blonde bit down again and again on the calloused skin through her gloves, swallowing against the sudden pain as the girl’s jaw snapped at her flesh thanks to misfiring jaw muscles. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she looked around for any assistance.

 

Ron, that lucky bastard, had a leather wallet that he had crammed into his ninja’s mouth. He held her helplessly, staring around the ill-lit stone corridor in the same manner Shego was.

 

She turned her stare on Wade and growled, wincing again as Kim’s body trembled in her grasp and the girl worked the side of her hand. “Nerdlinger! Damn it! Snap out of it and fucking do something!”

 

The darker skinned boy shook his head and ran over to the kimmunicator, lying on the craggy floor. He ran over first to Yori and Ron. Waving the device in front of the girl who, was almost doubled over backwards now, Wade frowned and tapped several buttons on the com.

 

He came over to Kim next and knelt. A translucent green beam lanced out from the top of the tool and traversed Kim’s body. After a moment, it refocused on her head, making multiple passes before winking out.

 

“WELL?!” Shego’s voice wavered slightly between her anxiety and the pain the seizing girl was inflicting on her gloved and previously burned hand.

 

“She’s having a seizure.”

 

“No Shit, Sherlock!” The mercenary snarled, trying not to jostle Kim and feeling her palm being further mauled. “How about you tell me something that a one eyed monkey _couldn’t_ figure out! Like why, and how to stop it!”

 

“Give me a minute! I’m a computer tech, not a doctor!” Wade yelled, tapping in seemingly random combinations of buttons into the kimmunicator.

 

“Tell me you’re not “Giggling” the results!” Shego snapped and tried again to look to the buffoon for help; but he was busy trying to restrain Yori, whose spasms seemed to consist if her trying to touch her belly to the ceiling while grabbing her ankles.

 

“No, trying to contact Kim’s mom… no answer.” The rotund boy scowled, “So _now_ I’m Giggling.”

 

**_ -KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP- _ **

****

“Bonnie, my aunt and uncle are genii. I’m sure if anyone could figure out why you can’t lie, it’s them.” Larry Johansen snorted and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his hose as he led his girlfriend from her convertible to the Possible’s house.

 

“Genii? Oh, multiple geniuses.” Bonnie sighed. She’d finally managed to trowel on enough bronzer to hide her bleached skin, but even now it was starting to smear and flake off. And this was the stickiest most permanent instant tan she knew of, it was practically toxic in its adherence. “They sure didn’t seem very helpful last night! Your freaky uncle helped that bi- That girl play games with me!”

 

Larry smiled and caressed the small of Bonnie’s back as they made their way up the walk. He always knew that she was far more intelligent than she generally wanted known. She just didn’t exercise her brain except to calculate against others. It had been like playing against a twelfth level Dungeon Mage trying to convince her to give him a chance. She was already starting to pick up Latin and advanced game play tactics, plus she almost never called Kim a bitch any more around him.

 

“Well, to be fair, Cousin Kim _is_ trying to adjust to her own affliction too. I wonder what strange handicap it’s given her?”

 

Bonnie fixed her clandestine boyfriend with an icy glare, stopping in the middle of the path, “It’s turned her into a flaming lesbo, apparently! You should have seen her big dyke girlfriend rooting her on last night. Right in front of the Dorkasaurus maxidon!”

 

“Kim and Shego? Really?” The chubby boy blinked behind his glasses, “There have been rumors lately on the more reputable hero-ship sites… but you saw it?”

 

“Oh, totally! That greek woman, Shego right? She had her eyes on Possible from the door the whole time that she and that ninja girl were dancing around in the kitchen. Squirming, fidgeting, and ringing her hands, the whole deal! And stupid Ron doesn’t even know! Then again, if that ninja was the same girl who was practically fellating him in school yesterday, why would he?!”

 

Considering his goddess girlfriend, Larry pursed his lips. She couldn’t lie, but the nebbish boy wasn’t sure if that extended to exaggerations or no. Still, he knew that Bonnie at least knew what a real ninja was, and that was knowledge she hadn’t even gotten from him, strangely enough. He also knew that Bonnie had about the keenest eye for detail he’d ever met outside of the geek world of fanboys. In fact, she had been the one to point out to him when Miko had been staring at Britty the Vampire Slaughterer’s butt in the last issue.

 

“So the shampoo made Kim a lesbian? Weird. But we can worry about that later. Maybe Aunt Annie can do a brain scan on you. I mean, not being able to lie has got to show up on a high level PET scan at least. And if you can’t lie, how will you ever _not_ tell Tara that Josh was with Marcella last week?”

 

“That’s why I love you Larry, you always know how to keep me on track.” Bonnie was smirking cockily as always, and then suddenly her face froze, and twisted into a look of shock. “You… you did not just hear me say… say Th- THAT!”

 

Fortunately, Bonnie wasn’t the only one learning things from this forbidden geeklust. Larry had learned enough about tact in the last few weeks to know when to whistle innocently and pretend to know nothing. “Hear what? You having a nervous breakdown because of some unknown chemical compound coursing through your neurotransmitters; just like in The Replacements #17 when She-Thing confesses her undying love to the Chartreuse Spider?”

 

Her eyes lost just a little of their frightful panic and she smiled, mentally wiping her brow in relief. “More like number five when Ben tells Jen Walters he _really_ just wants to be friends… but yeah… glad to know you got the idea.”

 

“Well, so long as neither of us starts suffering from that famous Riley luck,” he chuckled.

 

She was giving his plump backside a firm squeeze and walking him, via that grip, to the door when her world turned a violent shade of blue, and then was engulfed in blackness.

 

“Uuuugh… You and you’re big mouth, Lawrence William Johansen…” Bonnie groaned in a pained exclamation as she came around, tied to yet another chair in the Possible’s kitchen.

 

“How was I supposed to know Aunt Annie and Uncle James had been taken hostage by Mister Lipsky?” The chubby boy whined and tugged at his ropes.

 

“Scenario number twelve, duh! The heroes go off to capture the villain, while the villain goes off to exact revenge on the heroes and the turncoat?” The cheerleader groaned to herself softly and bowed her head, “And I totally can’t believe I said that. I so need to stop dating a nerd!”

 

“Oh yeah… hehehe, sorry.” If Larry could have rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment, he would have. “…and what do you mean we need to stop dating?”

 

The two teens were interrupted, looking up at the sounds of further struggle to see…

 

“Monique? Oh great! My humiliation is complete!” Bonnie groaned as the dark-skinned girl was set down next to her thick, pale lover. If she were able, she would have hid her peeling face in her hands. As it was, she could only shake her head and send tiny bronze flecks drifting into her lap.

 

“Girl, just shut it. Where’s Kim at? She gonna pay for ditchin’ me at the store for her shift and making me come get her butt.”

 

“Scenario Twelve,” was all Larry quipped as he watched the henchmen tie the fashion plate to the chair.

 

“Say what? Uh-uh… speak English. And what happened to you, woman? Looks like all that suntan booth’in finally caught up to you.”

 

Bonnie snarled at her newest companion as the Possible parents looked on, shaking their heads. “Says the girl with the bad permanent wave? As if!”

 

“Silence! All of you!” The discussions were interrupted by Doctor Drakken, “Why aren’t Shego and Kim Possible here?! And that… boy of hers… the one with the funny ears? Whatisname?”

 

Instantly everyone started talking at once trying to answer or deny the question.

 

**_ -KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP- _ **

**__ **

“Okay, why the fuck could we just walk in and out of that place?” Shego was chewing her lip as she looked over Kim, who was lying in an unnaturally peaceful state on one bench of the global justice jet.

 

“Shego, language, please?” Ron groaned as he looked back and forth between Kim and Yori.

 

The two girls had finally stopped seizing, and with little other choice, Ron, Shego, and Wade had dragged them back to the Global Justice Jet. They had landed it by remote control, and were trying to get the two unconscious girls strapped down as tightly as they could.

 

“Fuck off, Doofus! If ever there was a time to curse, now is it!” the exotic woman scowled, then resumed staring at Kim, who didn’t as much as move. “Turbonerd, tell me you got something?!”

 

“I got nothing… I can’t tell what caused the seizures… but It probably has something to do with the Drak-co products. Beyond that I can’t tell anything. The Global Justice health card told me to inject them each with some anti-seizure medication, but I don’t know if it will work, if it will be enough, anything! We need to get them to a hospital… the closest one is in Cartagena!”

 

“No, what we need to do is go back in there and get the antidotes and notes. If we take Bubble Butt to the hospital, they won’t do much that we haven’t already done… strap them down, shoot ‘em up with meds, and watch their brains fry!” Shego growled and flashed her eyes at Ron. “You, get some gear and come with me. You, nerdenheimer, stay right here. If they start spasming, there’s choke sticks in the first aid kit, jam them as far down their mouths sideways as you can.”

 

“Wait, why me? You know the place, and there’s like no guards, can’t you just get what we need?” Ron blinked, turning away from Yori and Kim as Shego seemed to be pocketing every weapon she could grab. “What if Kim needs me, or Yori?”

 

With a feral noise, Shego grabbed him by the collar and slammed him into the curving hull of the jet. “Snap out of it! God how does Princess manage to succeed with your worthless ass dragging behind?! You’re coming because I don’t have any super powers, so if I get shot or stunned, that’s it… game over. I know you can keep up with Pumpkin, so you’ll damned sure keep up with me if you know what’s good for you. Got it?!”

 

“Owwww! You don’t have to shout!” Ron whined a bit, and was released from the tall woman’s grasp. He rubbed the back of his head and grumbled “Now I see why Drakken kicked you ou- Eeep!”

 

“One more word out of you not related to saving Kimmie and the shinobi, and you lose that tongue.” The dark woman had grabbed him by the jaw and was dragging him about the confines of the jet. “Here, take these grenades, neither of us can puncture any synthos we run into.”

 

When they had finally set out for Drakken’s lair once more, Ron swallowed, trying to pick his words carefully. “Uh, Shego…”

 

A growl of irritation was his response. Still, he pressed on.

 

“Look, uh… I know you’re more concerned over Kim that a villain should be. Is this part of that whole _‘I’m the one who gets to kill her’_ thing they talk about on the net?” he made sure to slow down enough to be out of grabbing range as he said this. “Because if it is… you should know that I’ve got her back, and if you try to do anything to hurt her I’ll…!”

 

_‘Oh if only it were that simple… damn it if it were just about killing the irritating little Bubble Bu… gah! I have got to stop saying that, thinking it, whatever!’_ Clenching her fists and teeth, Shego let go a long breath as the approached the door to the lair. “No Buffoon. It's not about that…”

 

“Then what?”

 

“Gnnnn… It’s about Drakken pissing me off and getting revenge, Okay?!Kimmie is along for the ride because she wants it too… oh she may say it’s all about helping the world… but let’s face it; it’s all about her and how Drakken defaced that pretty red hair of hers.”

 

She never turned, fooling herself into believing it was to keep her eyes on the door. Really she didn’t want the blonde boy to see that she was forcing these words out. Her minds, part of it at least, was screaming that she was doing this for one reason, to save Kim’s life. Another voice of course said that she was indeed doing this to take her vengeance on Drew… but that voice was much quieter than it had been a half hour ago, when Kimmie had collapsed.

 

“Grrr, I’ll be glad when this is all over and Bubble Bu- Erg! When Kimmie isn’t commanding me to lust after her anymore. Fucking pheromones!” She muttered to herself.

 

“What was that? Shego, are you feeling all right? You’re talking to your-,”

 

Ron’s question about what Shego was whispering about was cut off as the Grecian dropped to her knees, clutching her midsection and gasping. The gasp was cut off a second later when she fell to her hands and knees, a font of gritty black bile erupting from her mouth and nose as she vomited, trying all the time to crawl off the path and into the brush at the edge of the tail.

 

Coughing and gagging, Shego’s hands clawed at the dirt as she squeezed her eyes shut against the world, trying to steady herself again as the sudden revolution in her body subsided a bit. Ron was at her side instantly, owing to his only being a few steps behind.

 

She was more than a little shocked when she felt him holding her thick brown hair back and offering her a nappy from his backpack stuffed with supplies.

 

“You’re sick too, aren’t you? That’s not normal tossings from a bad breakfast.” He stared at her, a mixture of concern and frustration in his brown eyes. He was also a little green as the wind brought the smell of the detritus right at them.

 

The mercenary scowled at him and slowly wiped her mouth off, not trusting herself to open it yet. She felt utterly mortified, sitting in the middle of the jungle, on her hands and knees, with some teenage boy holding her hair back as she wretched a second time.

 

Finally, after several seconds of wobbling around, and even leaning against the doofus as she panted and tried to will her body to stop spinning and aching and burning, she glared up at him. “What was your first clue?”

 

“So you weren’t whizzing in the bushes when we landed, were you?”

 

“You’re such a gentleman, Stoppable. No, I wasn’t taking a piss…I was doing this.” Shego narrowed her eyes at him and gripped the handy branch of a tree, hoisting herself to her feet. “You’re smarter than you let on… Drakken’s stuff is messing with my body.”

 

Ron reached out and put his palm to her forehead. It was promptly smacked away with an irritated snort. “You feel normal to me. What’s it doing?”

 

She grimaced and shook her head, “That’s the problem! My body temperature is normally way higher… Like up around 107.. Now I’m a cool 98.6.”

 

“And that’s bad because you’re body doesn’t know how to handle it, huh? Because of the meteor? So it’s shutting down or something?” Ron looked at her with growing concern, and then back at the trail of chuck, which he realized, had to be something other than food.

 

 Sheshona started to drag herself up the trail. She felt a little stronger now that what was inside of her was out. She wasn’t stopping now. Still, the revelations about the doofus grated on her, “You little fucker. You’re this fucking smart, how can you put all the work off on Pumpkin?!”

 

“What?!” Ron scurried along behind her. His helping hands were smacked away again when he tried to take her backpack or guide her arm as she stumbled, “What are you talking about?”

 

“You, you little shirk! Kimmie deserves so much better than some slacker making her do all the mental heavy lifting!” She spat more saliva, bile, and disgust with Ron, onto the ground as they moved. “Gimme your damned canteen!”

 

Ron’s eyebrows knit together at Shego’s words. He handed over the water and watched her gargle and spit several times before handing it back. Why was Shego talking about what Kim deserved? And not about deserved stuff like death, broken limbs, or embarrassment; but good stuff?

 

“Ahbububu!” She cut him off when he opened his mouth to defend himself, “Come on Doofus. Let’s get this done. You can explain to me later why you let the world’s greatest teen hero cover for your lazy ass while you fuck some geisha ninja hottie behind her back.”

 

The freckled boy frowned, but followed the mercenary to the door of the castle. After a long pause where he debated correcting Shego on the couple of issues she raised, “You sure about this? You look even more green than normal.”

 

“Look, the sooner we get this done, the sooner I can stop hoarking and Kimmie can get her brain and hair back and she can smack you around for boffing the ninja!” She snapped at him again. “Now shut up and help me open this door!”

 

Shego bit her lip and breathed deeply, another wave of burning sickness rolling through her body. She felt glad she hadn’t blurted something too personal out with that outburst. She and Cupcake were going to have a long talk about mind control and pheromones when this was all done. She did not like other people telling her brain who to want to throw down on a bed and… _‘Grrr, SO not the time Shesona!’_


	20. “With Apologies”

“Look, Stoppable, throwing me concerned glances out the corner of your eye isn’t making this any easier, and it’s damned sure not making me feel any better… So suck it up. Now, grab that plasma phase disupto- No the blue one!”

 

Shego grit her teeth and bit back another in an endless series of dry heaves as her body rebelled against itself. She also bit off the sharp insult that threatened to follow the bile up. The truth was she was barely moving under her own power, and even the buffoon wasn’t all that fooled by her bluff at this point.  The only thing the formerly malachite mercenary had going for her was that, unlike Kimmie and the ninja, she was still in control of her mental faculties.

 

A fact that her occasionally doubled vision refuted. They were in the storage area of the lair, which Drakken kept very cool for whatever reasons, and Shego’s uniform was soaked through with sweat in the spots it wasn’t covered with her effluvia. With a groan, she dumped out the contents of some box, and then started shoveling in the gadgets and computer thumb drives they had looted.

 

“What do we need a Plasma Phase thingy for?” The blonde questioned as he picked up the blue one as he’d been harshly instructed.

 

“We’ve been lucky so far, but we’re going to run into another henchman or a syntho sooner or later,” the paler-than-normal mercenary barked, “And I’d rather not have to throw down with them unless absolutely necessary. That thing, we found out accidently, solidifies synth-goo. And it’ll usually knock out a person as well.”

 

“So why not take the red one too?” he reached for the aforementioned blaster, only to have his hand grabbed and nearly crushed, despite his companion’s weakened state.

 

“Sure… and you can explain to your girlfriends, both of them, about how you carbonized half the lair. The red one doesn’t have a… a throttle… on it. It fires at 100% power all the time.” She snorted, and let go of his hand once he had put the dangerous thing down.

 

“That would be so cool,” he mused, “If it wasn’t likely to bring the castle down on top of us.”

 

When he wasn’t looking, she gave her hand a sharp shake, trying to relieve the strained muscle feeling it held after that small about of exertion. She shook her head at the dork beside her and sighed. Still, he was proving Kim right at least; he was a lot more useful than she and Drakken usually saw, as long as she kept barking orders at him.

 

“All a matter of perspective I guess…” She muttered as she thrust the half-full box in to his arms. “All right, let’s go to the control room and see if we can find the cure, and where little boy blue-balls went.”

 

Ron snickered, and nodded, following her down the corridor. While they weren’t exactly as sneaky as he and Kim usually were, they didn’t find any signs of habitation until they were almost to the cavernous main room of the castle-like lair. He yelped and ducked back behind a bend in the passage, and Shego quickly followed suit.

 

“So, you seem to be in charge. What now, fearless leader?” he quipped at her as he carefully set the box down.

 

He seriously doubted that she was, as she had said, able to ‘throw down’ with even Drakken’s overweight enforcers. Worse, there was also a red suited Synthodrone in there too, and Shego’s survival knife from first aide kit on the hover jet had proved fairly inadequate against the previous two the group had encountered earlier that day.

 

After a pause, “Okay Shego, so here’s the plan…”

 

**_ -KP-KP-KP-KP-KP- _ **

**__ **

If she could have, Bonnie would have pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers and groaned into her palm. As it was, tied to a chair, all she could do was to shake her head and shut her eyes.

 

Worse, a small pang of jealousy shot through her, and fear. Larry, well, he liked strong women; and after herself and Kim, there were no girls in Middleton High tougher than Monique, with whom he was currently arguing. And worse, unlike herself, Monique obviously had no problems being seen around freaks, geeks, and losers. What if she decided she _liked_ liked Larry?

 

“Enough!” Drakken bellowed, interrupting the squabbling teens, “This is not a scenario, or a gambit, or a proof, or anything of the sort! Now, where are Kim Possible and Shego?”

 

“Probably licking each other on some beach.” The tan cheerleader regretted it as soon as she said it. Not because it was in any way inaccurate in her opinion, but because all eyes in the very crowded kitchen turned to her, including the blue weirdo’s.

 

After a long moment of bald faced incredulity, Draken shook his head, “Impossible. Shego has been having an affair with that masseuse of hers for over a year. Why else would she spend every vacation at Σπίτι του μασάζ?”

 

“Duh, every man at the House of Massage is as gay as springtime. Or did you think it’s being adjacent to the Isle of Lesbos was just good marketing?” Bonnie rolled her eyes as if this was as obvious as the sky being blue. Again, truth rolled from her mouth. Of course, this time, it was basically public knowledge for anyone who frequented southern Greece.

 

Drakken boggled for a moment and began to sputter. “But she-! She turned me down for karaoke! She said she was seeing someone! It had to be him!”

 

“You never once thought that she might just not _like_ you? Aren’t you the dickweed who caused all this? Why the hell would anyone short of your own mother want anything to do with you? I’d even have doubts about her if you weren’t such an obvious momma’s boy!” The cheerleader snorted derisively, tilting her nose into the air in an affronted manner.

 

“Girl speaks the truth.” Monique piped in in a moment of solidarity against their captor. “Kim notwithstanding, who would want anything to do with you?”

 

“Gah! Call the Lair! I want all of Shego’s flight records for the last year! Now!” the scientist flailed with his arms as he spun away from the spiteful teen. “Stanizlawz… Stan?! Gah! Where has that man gotten to now?!”

 

The teenagers really could not care less where one of the red suited hench-people had gone, but Anne and James suddenly started looking around.

 

In the living room, Stanislawz almost shouted into his hidden communicator, “What do you mean no backup? What about the HRT? What?! No I don’t know about the bodywash, I’ve been undercov- _oomph_!”

 

**_ -KP-KP-KP-KP-KP- _ **

 

“Ahhhhh!!!!!!!” The Blond teen screamed as loudly as his lungs would allow as he ran into the command center, “She’s gonna kill me!!!!”

 

“Kill you my great green ass! I’m going to fucking eat you alive and shit out the remains! That’s _MY_ plan!” Shego shouted harshly as she gave chase, swinging a purloined stun staff like a baseball bat over her head.

 

“Save me!” Ron darted behind one of the human guards, cringing in abject terror. “Really! I didn’t mean it!”

 

“ _Shut Up!”_ Shego yelled, and swung. “ _Stand! Still!”_

 

The poor guard Ron was using as a shield got clobbered twice by the heavy power pole.

 

“Get Back Here!” She yelled as Ron dove away and through the legs of the second guard.

 

“Not on your life!” was the yelped response.

 

A pained grunt followed as the club tried to follow Ron between the henchman’s legs, but stopped when it impacted his crotch. Shego growled hotly in frustration and left the first two guards crumpled as she chased the wily teen past the Synthodrone and around the command center. She came to a stop with her prey cowering behind the henchman sitting at the desk.

 

“Halp!” he swallowed, cowering.

 

“What the hell did you try to get her to do?!” the hench demanded, equally scared as Shego towered over him, pole at the ready.

 

Shego clubbed downwards without giving an answer, missing Ron but taking out the technitian hench. Growling, she flipped a hand through her messed hair, “He tried to get me to come in here in my fucking panties.”

 

“Hey! It was a good plan!” Ron whined, before sighing and relenting the role he had been assigned, “But yours was better.”

 

Behind them, the Synthodrone approached, unnoticed. Just as it was about to grab the mercenary in its crushing embrace, however, it deflated with a wet spattering sound. Turning, Shego looked down, and then made a disgusted face.

 

There, wrapped in black and red latex and coated in green goo, was Rufus, his incisors holding a punctured piece of the drone.

 

“That’s disgusting! He looks like a limp dick in a broken condom!” She made a horrified face, before degenerating into laughter.

 

Rufus made his displeasure with the comparison loudly known and then huffed, crossing his paws over his chest and refusing to give any further aid to the mission.

 

Ron moved to console his little partner; until the view screen sprang to life with the puckered blue face of Doctor Drakken.

 

“Report on your assignment!” Drakken barked.

 

“My molerat ate it!” Ron responded automatically.

 

“Huh-uh!” Rufus chirped angrily

 

The man on screen blinked, and then pointed, “You!”

 

The woman standing in the mess of goo pointed right back, “You!”

 

**_ -KP-KP-KP-KP-KP- _ **

 

On the other end of the video link in Middleton, Bonnie rolled her eyes and groaned. “Oh great! Our lives are in the hands of the pantsless wonder and the big green dy-“

 

Her words were cut off by a piece of duct tape being slapped over her mouth, for which Drakken, and even the Possibles, gave a greatful sigh. The blue doctor turned back to the screen after a moment, clenching his fists.

 

“Shego! What are you doing trespassing in my lair?!”

 

“Well, you know how it is Doc. I left my stuff, needed my Nair for some personal grooming… What do you think I’m doing here?!” Shego’s flippant response ended in an angry shout as she glared at the screen.

 

“Nair?” In the kitchen, the mad scientist arched both brows, not sure if Shego really meant she was looking for depilatory crème.

 

Behind him, the now-gagged brunette rolled her eyes exasperatedly. Monique, beside her, mimicked the gesture and sighed. “I am so glad no one but these goons and you all can see this. I can’t believe we were actually taken by this guy.”

 

“I know, right?” Larry snorted in disbelief. “Even _I_ know sarcasm when I hear it on that level.”

 

Monique was about to continue her bemoaning when she stopped, turning to the nebbish Possible cousin. “No comic book reference? No obscure TV show quote? No plans from the latest Crypts and Chimeras handbook?”

 

“Cha, right.” He retorted, and then looked to his secretive girlfriend.

 

Monique arched a brow, and smirked to herself at the training that was apparently being put in here.

 

“So, not only have you taken up with Kim Possible, but you’ve adopted her nameless sidekick?” Drakken snorted as his conversation with his former employee continued.

 

“As if!” Shego scoffed on the screen. “I just needed a pack mule. Now… I’ll give you the choice, either tell me where to find the antidote to this crap you stuck me with, or I burn down the lair, starting with your recipe box.”

 

“You wouldn’t dare!” the blue scientist bellowed, and then paled as Shego held up a worn and yellowed notecard. “Ah- ah let’s not be hasty now Shego.”

 

“Antidote. Now. Or say goodbye to…” The Grecian paused, looking at the card, and then grinned evilly at the scientist standing in the Possible’s kitchen. “Ohhhh, Mama Lipsky’s Stroganaff!”

 

“Hey! I’d like to have a copy of that She-,” Ron piped up, his innate cook curious about the recipe. Then he recognized the backdrop framing Drakken, and his visage displayed on the small screen set over the coffee maker in the Possible’s Kitchen panicked. “Hey! What are you doing at Kim’s place?!”

 

Drakken blinked confusedly a moment at the exclamation, and then his face degenerated into a wicked grin. “Yes! I have the Possibles, plus several of Kim Possible’s little friends!”

 

The camera he was speaking into panned, displaying the white-faced Bonnie, her makeup peeling away; and then Larry, Monique, and the Parent’s Possible. When it focused back on Drakken himself, he was chuckling. “As you can see, one of them has already been struck by my products. You, sidekick… Unless you bring me Shego and Kim Possible, I will use my other products on the rest of them, one at a time.”

 

“Well, I’ll admit that taping Bonnie’s mouth is an improvement, but let’s not be hasty here!” Ron tried to hedge as he fidgeted nervously. “Um…… Uh…. How about… you come here, since I already have Kim and Shego at your place! And then you… uh…..”

 

The screen over the Possible’s coffee maker suddenly blinked out, the view of Shego and Ron replaced by static, and then the Señor Coffee logo a moment later.

 

“What happened?!” Drakken demanded of his henchmen.

 

“Looks like the signal was lost, Doctor Drakken.” One of the faceless redsuits reported.

 

**_ -KP-KP-KP-KP-KP- _ **

 

In the Caribbean lair, Shego put away her plasma phase pistol after destroying the communication screen. A second later, she collapsed forward over the smoldering console and loosed her stomach’s contents into it, causing it to smoke and release a horrid stench.

 

A second later, Ron was at her side, pulling her away from the mess she had created. He guided her to the chair the technician hench had been in and sat her down. She yanked her hands from his concerned grasp and growled menacingly between hiccups. “Lay off!”

 

“Okay okay!” the blond boy yelped. After a moment of watching Shego, he pursed his lips. “Um, So, what do we do now?”

 

Looking up at him and groaning between frustration and her body’s growing aches, she ran a shaky hand through her brown hair. “Well, obviously we take whatever else we can find here and head back.”

 

“Um… who flies? You’re hoarking on everything in sight, and Yori is in a coma!” he wrung his hands and looked around nervously. “And I don’t think your friend Otto can fly us all the way to Middleton.”

 

“I guess that leaves you and Nerdlinger, huh?” Sheshona growled as she chewed back yet another wave of vertigo and noticed the hand in her hair had come away both soaked in a cold sweat, and with a few strands of brunette. “Shit! Now I’m losing my hair!? Damnit!”

 

“Um… two things to think about…” Ron supplied, trying to get Shego to focus, “One, I think losing your hair is the least of your worries at the moment, and two… where were the tweebs?”

 

“Tweebs?”


	21. “In Flight Refueling”

“Seriously Shego, I don’t know what I’m doing here.” Ron hedged, flipping the control he had been instructed to.

 

Listening to the engines whirl up, he looked over at the ragged woman and winced. She looked more like a corpse from ‘Left for Gone’ than a living person, but her eyes said she could and would still do bodily harm to him if he didn’t shape up. Shivering at the angry bloodshot brown eyes, he waited for the next instruction.

 

“Touch the little icon of a globe in the upper left corner of the main screen.” She bemoaned, swallowing back yet another wave of bile. Her yak bag was half full, which was amazing considering she thought she had just gotten up the hotdogs from her ninth birthday party. “I told you already, all you have to do is keep your hand on the control so the ship knows there’s a living person in charge, it will do the rest barring any… unforeseen issues.”

 

Ron wasn’t sure if the pause was a portent, or just another wave of pain, but either way, he didn’t like it. “So why can’t you hold the contr- oh… yeah…”

 

The blond boy mumbled when he saw that Shego had once already missed her emesis bag, even though she was holding it with both hands right under her chin. “Right... can’t hold plastic bag up, can’t hold interactive joystick. Now what?”

 

“Hurkt!” was the only response he got, and he shivered. He was already past the point of wanting to vomit in sympathy, because he had also already lost what little he had in him.

 

“Sorry. Ugh! Now, click on North America, then Colorado, then Middleton, keep clicking down till you can’t any mo- BLECH”

 

The blond boy ignored the truncation of instructions and did as he was told. He got all the way down to the corner of fifth and vine in Middleton, which was only a few blocks from the Possible’s house before it refused to zoom any further. “I click the green accept button?”

 

“D- doy.” She shivered slightly.

 

“Ro-… She-…” back in the crew area of the Global Justice jet, a very pale redhead-turned-blonde stirred and groaned.

 

The two bench seats that lined the sides of the compartment had been pressed into service as gurneys. Fortunately, they were designed for this. Under normal conditions, Wade loved such elegant design, but right now he had far more pressing concerns in mind. Strapped tightly to one bench was Kim Possible, who seemed on the verge of waking. Opposite her, strapped to the other, was Akematsu Yori, who showed no signs of regaining consciousness.

 

Wade, who had been sitting in the jump seat that faced Yori’s feet, quickly leapt to Kim’s side and touched her shoulder. “Kim, you awake? How are you feeling?”

 

Dulled green eyes assessed the intelligence of that question, and for a moment Wade felt like he was looking at Shego, not Kim. “Like someone fed me through a meat grinder, backwards. Oh, and the entire cheer squad is balanced on top of my brain.”

 

Wade grimaced and nodded. He could only imagine what it felt like to have every muscle in his body fire at once as had happened to Kim. He shook the cheerleader’s shoulder when her eyes closed again, and she growled at him.

 

“Lights ferociously messing with my eyes, Wade. I am not opening them again unless I have to. Have-,” Kim swallowed softly and licked her lips, trying to ignore the sudden twitch that ran along one of her arms like an alien thing moving beneath her skin, “Have you talked to my mom?”

 

It was the heavy boy’s turn to swallow and he did so. A heavy moment passed, and Kim did turn to glare at him briefly. It prompted him to speak up finally. “Drakken has your parents; plus Larry, Bonnie, and Monique.”

 

“Crud.” The cheerleader grit her teeth and closed her eyes.

 

“Well, it could be worse?” the dark skinned boy sheepishly offered the pale cheerleader.

 

“How could it be worse, Wade?” Kim growled, and would have rubbed her face were she not strapped down.

 

“We don’t think they have the tweebs.”

 

“The tweebs are loose? Oh yeah, that’s so much freaking better than their being under guard.” Gritting her teeth against a sudden and massive sensation of spinning, Kim screwed her face up in a pained expression. After a long moment, swallowing back a wave of nausea, she resumed. “And we who? Where are Ron and Shego?”

 

“In the cockpit, Shego’s sick too, so Ron is flying the plane.” Wade winced at the expression he received at that news.

 

It’s not something you could do? You remote fly the Kimmunicator all the god damned time!”

 

“Calm down, Kim. The more agitated you get, the worse your brain readings get.” Wade tried to be as soothing as he could, which wasn’t very much given his nervousness.

 

Taking a deep breath, Kim concentrated on trying to get her heart to slow down. Something that wasn’t helped by the sensation of it occasionally fluttering within her chest. Finally, she nodded. “Okay… now, explain why you’re not flying the plane instead of Ron of Shego is so sick.”

 

“I… uh… I couldn’t reach the peddles.” The rotund boy sheepishly admitted. He quickly added when he saw Kim’s expression fall, “But Shego says a trained money can fly these jets!”

 

Kim rolled her eyes and clutched the edge of the bench she was strapped to, “Great… I don’t even play video games, and I know Ron blows at flight simulators.”

 

**_-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-_ **

****

“Tell us what you did to our sister!”

 

“Or else we’re going to tell you what we can do with the JPX in the garage and your shoes!”

 

Agent Stanislawcz Swallowed. These twins were about half his size, and probably 15 years old at the most, but they were scaring the crap out of him, tied as he was to a chair in their bedroom-turned-lair.

 

“I didn’t do anything to Miss Possible,” he responded after a moment, I’m not even working for Doctor Drakken, I’m under cover.”

 

“Yeah right,”

 

“Like we believe that,”

 

“Prove it.”

 

“Yeah, prove it!”

 

The double talk, and turning his head back and forth between the two of them was giving him a headache, and it too a moment for him to think. “My mini-com!”

 

“What mini-com?”

 

“We searched you while you were unconscious.”

 

“Crap on a cracker.” The undercover man groaned and hung his head, “I must have dropped it when you clobbered me.”

 

“A likely story.”

 

“Yeah, sure you did…”

 

An irritated look on his face, Stanislawcz growled at each of them. “I must have! Look, obviously Drakken doesn’t know you two are here… If you don’t get it back, one of the real henchmen is bound to find it, and then our collective gooses are cooked!”

 

The twins Possible chewed their lips and looked at each other.

 

“Well, he was talking to someone,”

 

“And there wasn’t anyone else in the room,”

 

“But maybe he’s just as crazy as Drakken,”

 

“Wouldn’t be the first time…’

 

“Yeah, like that Frugal Lucre guy,”

 

“From the Smarty Mart.”

 

“Oh for crying out loud!” Stanislawcz groaned and rolled his eyes, “I was talking to central dispatch at Global Justice. They’ve been hit by Drakken’s products, and told me they couldn’t send help. Look, unless we get my mini-com back before someone finds it, we’re not only up crud creek, but we won’t have a paddle.”

 

The undercover agent glared back and forth between them, narrowing his eyes. “And it gets worse… I don’t think that Drakken intends to cure the product’s effects. So unless your sister and her friends can do something with his notes… Look. Get the mini-com and you can use it to talk to Dr Director yourselves. Doesn’t matter if I’m telling the truth or not then, right?”

 

The brunette twins looked at each other uncertainly again.

 

“There’s a lot of hunches crawling around the house.”

 

“It could be dangerous…”

 

“Hoosha?”

 

“Hicka bicka boo!”

 

Stanislawcz rolled his head back in relief when they darted out of the room with sadistic grins on their faces. Once he was alone, he pulled out of his sleeve the laser scalpel he had taken off of Anne Possible and got to work on his bindings.

 

**_-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-_ **

 

“Honestly, you believe Shego is like…. That?” Drakken made a meaningless gesture with his small hands as he knelt in front of Bonnie Rockwaller.

 

“Well, she probably isn’t taking all of those vacations for her health…” Monique interjected and rolled her eyes.

 

“Well maybe her mental health… There is this theory that some personality disorders have a infectious component to them.” Larry supplied helpfully.

 

Drakken ran his hands through his hair, almost unbinding his pony tail in the process. “But… Shego… I mean… We had dinners together… She wore these dresses…”

 

“God you’re such a complete goober.” Bonnie groaned and rolled her eyes. “I’m not even gay and I know that lesbians like to dress up from time to time.”

 

Monique desperately wanted to spare a glance to the Possible’s, but if there was one thing she’d learned in the past year from watching Kim and Ron, it was how important distractions were. It made it that much harder to keep up this salacious little tale that Bonnie and Larry were weaving around Kim and this Shego to know that Kim’s parents had to sit through it.

 

But the longer they kept this blue weirdo distracted and not executing his plan, the longer that Ron and that chick in the green unitard had to get Kim back here to save the day. Taking a breath, she jumped into the discussion again, thinking about how much Kim was going to hate her for spinning this dirty little story in front of all these hench guys.

 

“Really… every woman likes to feel pretty. And if you were taking her out for free meals? Well I’ve gone out on dates to get fed before ya know…” She tried not to roll her eyes at her own statement and instead focused on selling her smirk.

 

“Free food? Please, like this nerd could afford the kids menu at Cow & Chow.” Bonnie rolled off smoothly, looking down her chemically bleached nose at Drakken. “Wasn’t he the one who put in the super cheap kids menu at Bueno Nacho last year?”

 

Monique clucked her tongue and shot a look at Larry. She didn’t like the way that the mad scientist reacted to that remark, grinding his teeth.

 

Larry, to his credit, got the signal and shook his head, “Now let’s not be too hasty here, Bonbon… It got millions of those cybertronic Diablo bots distributed around the world quickly.”

 

Bonnie simply rolled her eyes and sniffed. “As if. That was more like the biggest stroke of dumb luck. Obviously no one with any amount of intelligence had one, not a single one appeared at the high school after all, or on the military base or at the rocket center. I think this blue dor- OW!”

 

Bonnie shot an angry look at Monique, who had just kicked her hard in the shin. “What the hell was that for Monique?”

 

“Ixnay on the rashtay alktay.” She gritted out at the white-faced brunette and inclined her head at Drakken, who was now pacing up and down the length of the kitchen, clenching his fists.

 

Bonnie appeared about to unleash her acid tongue on Monique when it seemed to sink in to her not to push the madman too far. She coughed and squirmed her wounded leg a bit, “Then again, America’s not the only place in the world that matters, right?”

 

“Quite right!” Drakken spun, pointing a finger to the sky, “There’s also Canada!”

 

The three teens simply dropped their heads and rolled their eyes in unison at the exclamation.


	22. Penultimatium

**Kim Possible: A Blonde Moment**

" _ **Penultimatum"**_

By: Eoraptor

Agent Stanislawz had just succeeded in slashing through his wrist bindings when the door to the boy's room banged inwards again. The supposedly captive agent quickly threw his hands behind his back and the chair again as the hyperactive twins reappeared with excited gleams in their eyes.

"Well, we found," "your so-called communicator."

One of the boys held up his mini-com and sneered.

"But it doesn't actually work." "Yeah, it's just a bunch of static."

"And it's not Global Justice issue." "Not at all, not blue or anything." They challenged as one spun the com around by its ear piece cable.

Stanislawz hung his head and muttered a curse under his breath. Finally he looked up again and gave them a withering look, "Of course not. Do you think an undercover man just run's around with a bunch of branded gear? If you hadn't noticed, it's not Hench-co or Drakken's stuff either."

This seemed to bring the boys up short. Then the one in the green sweater, Jim was it…? pointed at him, "It could be Dementor's stuff! He and Drakken always have it in for each other!"

"Yeah, Sis says that all the time! And then there was the whole Larry. thing last month!" Tim added by way of clarification.

"Oh for the love of rice chips!" Stan threw his hands up in frustration. It took him a moment to understand why the boys looked at him in shock. "Oh crud."

_ZAP!_

**-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-**

Bonnie's mouth was retaped, much to the relief of the other occupants of the kitchen. Drakken had grown tired of her insistence that Shego was a lesbian, and involved with Kim Possible. While he could believe that Shego might occasionally dalliance with women, such was a supervillain's prerogative, he felt he was not so delusional as to believe that she might lower herself to the cliché of sleeping with her nemesis.

"Now then! …uh where was I?" The cerulean man faltered slightly, his extended finger drooping.

"Canada!" came the exasperated gasps from his assembled but still verbal captive audience.

"Ah Yes!" He nodded triumphantly, and resumed his rant, "My Palace shall be near the capital in Toronto, and it shall be grand!"

The geographically aware in the room rolled their eyes and squirmed against their ropes.

"The question is, though, what do I do with Greenland? That was supposed to go to Shego, but now… Merf, what do I do with a vast frozen waste with a few lippy Danes in it?"

"Why don't you ask her yourself?"

The inhabitants of the kitchen looked around, until finally someone noticed that the screen above the coffee maker was active again, the Señor Coffee logo replaced by a decidedly ashen Shego.

**-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-**

In the cockpit of the Global Justice jet, Shego had spent several minutes collecting herself and building up her reserves after the hasty exit from Drakken's lair. They had not found anything labeled or resembling a cure, and parts of Sheshona that she really hated at the moment whispered into her ear that their either wasn't one; or worse, she had destroyed it when she had blown up, and then vomited into, the console.

Now after silently allowing the buffoon and the autopilot, mostly the autopilot, guide them towards Colorado once more, she had realized that Drakken was probably in an absolute froth. If there was one iota of Teenage Heroine left in Sheshona Elsbeth Go from her days as a member of Team Go, it was that she hated seeing innocent civilians needlessly imperiled. After all, how would she feel if she was just going about her day and somebody dropped a skyscraper on her?

It was why she worked with Drakken. Aside from Bueno Nacho, he tended to work in grandiose strokes. A death-ray here, a weather machine there… Generally nothing that was likely to, say, vaporize a city. Well, except for the Pandimensional Vortex Inducer… but who was going to miss Las Vegas and the surrounding desert anyway?

With this in mind, she gathered what reserves she had left… none… and steeled herself to distract the blue madman.

"I said, why don't you let me decide what to do with Greenland, you great blue dork." She glared at the small screen and tried to not look like she was about to ralph all over it. "After all; once I ring the cure out of your ass, I'm going to corrupt Kimmie, kill the doofus and his rat, and conquer the world."

"Hey, I'm still in the room here!" whined Ron, "Well cockpit…"

On the small screen, Drakken seemed to finally be catching up with the thief's words. "So… it's true… you really are… oh what do the children call it these days…"

"Bumping uglies?"

"Doing the dungeon crawl?"

"Exchanging bra sizes?"

"Comparing cranial vaults?"

"Ensuring rockets are go?"

" _mmrphlpherf!_ "

came several disembodied voices and one tape-mouthed expletive.

"Ah yes… Bumping Dungeon Vaults!" Drakken raised his hand in triumphant gesture. Then his glare darkened, "How low can you sink, honestly Shego?"

Sheshona groaned into her palm; half in illness, and half in inadvertently outing herself to the insane hostage taker. "Listen Dork'en! I said corrupting her, not popping her ever-loving pumpkin cherry! God, what is it with men?!"

On the small screen, Doctor Drakken actually seemed taken aback. "Well, there's no need to be rude about it Shego."

"Uh, Shego?"

Shego, however, was unfazed, "Now listen up, Lipsky… I'm giving you once chance. Have a cure waiting for me when I arrive, or so help me, my throne will have _a blue leather seat!"_

"Hey Shego…"

"So you'd damned well better get to work if you know what is good for you, you hear me Lipsky, _you hear ME?!"_

" _SHEGO!"_

" _WHAT!?"_

"Duck!" Ron was pointing out of the cockpit, at something in front of the jet.

Too late to maneuver away, the jet sucked a large aquatic bird into its engine as Shego groaned to whatever deity she could recall fastest.

**-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-**

The signal winked out in the Possible's kitchen and returned to the Señor Coffee logo.

"What was that about a duck?" Drakken scratched his head in confusion.

"Well, you know what they say; using a feather is kinky, but using the whole duck is perverse."

Monique, Larry, and the Possibles looked to Bonnie, whose tape had fallen away from her mouth yet again due to the effects of her Dr. D's makeup pads..

Shaking her head, Monique sighed, "Ya know… If it weren't for the whole bleached skin, I'd actually buy some of those makeup pads."

"I know, right?" Bonnie smirked and shook her head slightly.

"It is impressive," Larry began in his nasally way, "You used those pads at least eighteen hours ago and even the glue from the gorilla tape is sliding right off. And that stuff is guaranteed to stick to anything. We even use it at Knight Gard Larping."

"Really?" Drakken turned away from the coffee maker. "You honestly would buy the makeup pads?"

"Well, like Monique said, if it weren't for the bleaching…" Bonnie shook her head, "You have no idea how hard it is to get off three layers of professional lip product."

"Ssst."

James Possible looked around in confusion at the discussion taking place with mild fascination.

"Sssssssst."

The sound of a leaking pressure conduit finally caught his attention, and the rocket scientist looked around, searching for the source.

Rolling her eyes, Anne sighed and hissed at him. "Honey, pay attention."

James looked over, and smiled. His wife already had her hands free; and was working on getting her feet loose of the ropes without attracting attention and without using her hands, which she pretended were still bound. He looked up, and followed her eyes carefully.

She looked from left to right, indicating with her eyes where she wanted her husband to go at the proper time. It was a code they had worked out years ago, for sneaking up and capturing their rambunctious twin boys, but it served just as well here.

**-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-**

Between Ron, Shehsona, and the advanced autopilot, they managed to get the Global Justice jet onto the ground safely. This was quite a challenge considering the craft had no wings to speak of and relied almost entirely on the thrust of two out-sized engines, one of which had just ingested a duck, to provide its lift.

Once on the ground, the first thing that the formerly-green mercenary did was to free her seatbelt, kick out the front escape hatch, and ralph all over the nose of the jet. She then promptly sat back into the co-pilot's seat and kicked the console, feeling ashamed of herself. She'd made more difficult landings in the kiddy rides at the mall and held her stomach!"

Ron was not in much better shape after the aerial crisis, and Rufus had to scurry down his arms and physically pull his fingers off of the control yoke. Flopping back into his seat, he groaned and tried to stretch the stressed digits out, "Thanks buddy."

" _mmhm mmhm! no problem!"_ Rufusgave a claws-up and nodded, standing on the control yoke.

"Dude!" Ron suddenly looked out his clean half of the windscreen, "We made it to Middleton!"

Indeed, just outside the craft's nose was the slightly off-kilter Bueno Nacho sign which had finally stopped the skidding craft. It creaked softly, and finally fell over at Ron's words, prompting the shocked Ned to lean out of the drivethrough and start yelling at them.

"Oh, so that's why I threw up…" Shego hiccupped and rubbed her temples, "And here I thought it was the fevers, the stripping of my powers, the kissy face crap, and the landing… Turns out it was just the stench."

Ron shot her a look before kicking out his own escape window and yelling down, "Hey Ned, can I get two Nacos and a Churro to go?!"

This just brought more yelling from the drive through window as patrons rapidly escaped the taco shack, fearing yet another robot invasion had arrived.

"And a large Spritely for me," Sheshona burped, "Need something to settle the stomach."

**-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-**

Once they had recovered Wade and the incapacitated girls from the back, Kim having passed out once again during the tortuous landing, Shego kicked the side of the jet with what little strength she had, "Damnit! I wanted to jack this thing once we were done! Now look at it!"

"Why would you want it? You own a fighter jet…" Ron scratched the top of his head as he tugged Kim inside the BN.

"Because that's a fighter jet, stupid," Shego spat, trying not to do much more than spit, "This thing can hover and has cargo space and a winch, what more could a mercenary thief want?"

Once Kim and Yori were situated with Wade and Ned to watch over them, and once Shego had threatened the assistant manager into giving her a gratis Spritely; she and Ron made their way back into the parking lot. Everyone else had fled the area, leaving nothing but abandoned cars in their wake.

The incapacitated super-merc walked up to one and tested the door. She checked a few more, before coming to a station wagon that was unlocked, "Lord save me, I'm turning into a suburbanite…"

Climbing in, she used the claws on her glove to fiddle with the ignition until the car turned over, "Well, get in doofus, we've got chicks to save and a cure to find."

Ron had learned in the last few hours not to question when Shego ordered, so he ran around to the passenger side and climbed inside. "We'll bring it back though, right?"

Shego's response was to grumble to herself and throw the wagon into gear, peeling it out to drown out any further simpering questions. "Huh, nice power for a grocery getter, maybe I'll keep this."

**-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-**

"Murry, Bootu, find out what that was," Drakken listened to the thumping sound from upstairs and glared at the ceiling, "And someone find me Stanis- Stanisk- whoever he is!"

The Possible parents also looked at the ceiling, and had a feeling that they knew where the missing agent was, and who was responsible for the heavy thump of a large body hitting the floor. They shook their heads and sighed, hoping the boys would just go and hide, and knowing that that was the furthest thing from Possible.

Upstairs, the boys decided they needed to hide a body. They dragged the supposedly under-cover henchman under one of their twin beds. After making the bed up enough to disguise his presence, they then dove under the other one and waited as they heard people coming up the stairs… decidedly unfriendly sounding people.

"Now where the heck is that pot-shiner at?" Grumbled one of the two red-suited henchmen who entered the bedroom.

"Hmm, not in here it looks like." The two were about to move down the hall when a telltale groan sounded out from under one of the beds.

"Hey Stan, that you?" the fatter of the two overweight henchmen kicked at the comforters.

"What are you doing under there, Man?" the other leaned over to tug up the bed skirts.

Just as both were leaning over, an electrical flash filled the room. After a moment, each twin boy crawled out from under the bed, one half of Stanislawz's stolen power pole in each of their respective right hands, steaming where they had been used on the two additional henchmen.

"Okay, now what?"

"Yeah, not like there's more room under the bed…"

"Well, there's the closet."

"…but these guys are at least two hundred fifty pounds each."

"And the hover sled is down in the garage…"

From down stairs, the thumps of two more bodies on the floor had apparently attracted attention, and they could hear Drakken's nassaly voice ordering more of them upstairs.

"He isn't really stupid enough to keep sending guys up here one and two at a time is he?"

"It's Doctor Drakken…"

"Hicka Bicka?"

"Hoosha!"


	23. Limited Warranty

The station wagon slowed as Shego entered the neighborhood. IF she just went tearing up to, or through, the front door of the Possible house, the jig would be up and twenty or more henchmen would be on top of the purloined station wagon before she could lean out to vomit through the open window.

 

“Looks kinda… quiet…” Ron observed from the passenger seat as they cruised through the cul-de-sac.

 

“It’s a suburb… What did you expect, the attack of the clowns?” She sneered.

 

“From Drakken?” the blond boy pointed out, “kinda.”

 

Shego hated to admit it, but he was right. She expected to see at least one oafish hench standing around conspicuously; instead, they were conspicuous by their absence. No ill-trained red suit thugs standing around smoking or eating or playing with the toys scattered around the various yards. Just a large hover-pod sitting in the back yard of the Possible House.

 

She parked the wagon a few houses down the street and watched the house, trying to distract herself from the fact that the world was spinning and twisting around her, her ears ringing, and her vision spotted.

 

“Should be like ten or twenty guys here… Princess’s house is not THAT big… so where are they?” She grumbled. “Well, we can go up the gut… not much in the way of cover for sneaking up is there?”

 

Shego had always thought the Possible household was a poorly defended example of suburban under-achievement… but now that she was planning an assault on the place, she realized just what security the sprawling development leant. Only a few mature trees could provide cover, the rest were stunted saplings. No tall privacy fences meant any approach to the house would be easily detected… or more likely any teenage rendezvous. And the bulbous end of the cul-de-sac meant that cars had to circle and drive around, rather than drive by anonymously… Cars like the one they now sat in.

 

Short of popping a rocket into her bedroom from one or two thousand feet away and hoping for the best; getting at Princess’s suburban palace was deceptively difficult.

 

“Okay… Buffoon… You go around the back way.” She sighed relutanctly. “I’ll go in the front door.”

 

“Isn’t sneaking more your thing?” He objected as he unbuckled his seatbelt.

 

“Look, I got exactly so many calories to spare and most of those are being spent not ralphing all over myself,” She scowled darkly, “I don’t have any more to waste in skulking around the back of the house. Besides, you’re six inches shorter. Easier to hide in the bushes.”

 

“Hmmm, Good point,” he reluctantly admitted.

 

**_ -KP-KP-KP-KP-KP- _ **

  
  
The twins were rapidly running out of spots to hide unconscious and bound henchmen. Even building a mobile anti-gravity platform out of their toy Ultra Mazigner C actionfigures was only a little help when they got to a half dozen.   
  
“Dude, how many has he got? The house isn’t that big!”  
  
“I know right?”  
  
“Maybe we should do something to distract them?”  
  
“Do we still have the JPX 42 we, uh, borrowed from dad?”  
  
“About a liter.”  
  
“And how many soda bottles?”  
  
“Six, I think…”  
  
“But what do we use for warheads?”  
  
“Well, Kim’s got a few spare trilithium power cells, yeah?”

 

**_ -KP-KP-KP-KP-KP- _ **

 

“Oh Crap…” Shego held up a hand, smacking her blonde distraction in the chest. “Kimmie’s got little brothers right?”

 

“You should know, you’ve been living here,” Ron complained as he was brought up short.

 

“Well, I know that, doofus,” She eyed him sideways as they paused in their approach, “What I mean is… are they anything like their sister? Are they likely to let themselves be taken alive?”

 

Ron didn’t like the phrasing on that. After a moment of frowning, he shook his head, “Well, they didn’t when you and KP got chipped.”

 

“Great, so that should give us three… two-,”

 

**_BLAM BLAM BLAM_ **

 

“A second ahead of schedule… I’m getting slow in my old age,” The villainess complained as she looked at the winding smoke trails heeling up from football sized craters blown into the turf. “But why not bigg-,”

 

An explosion interrupted her and took out the wall of the kitchen with a sciencefiction’ish whomp and whooshing sound; smoke vanishing in a whirl and a peak of light.

 

“Yeah, trilithium…” She sniffed the air and made a beeline for the neatly cut crater, “That was them.”

 

“You know what that smells like?” Ron hurried to keep up.

 

She shrugged, “I should, I’ve smashed enough kimmunicators over the years.”

 

They arrived at the hole just a second later, “So why didn’t the others do that whish bang thing?”

 

Shego fixed him with a look. She figured he’d keep asking if she brushed him off, and now was not the time for distractions, “Directional fuses, if it went straight down, they didn’t want the ground vanishing from under the whole house.”

 

“And you… you said crap. Don’t you usually say worse?” Ron craned his head, and then changed his tactic, lifting up his rodential counterpart. “Rufus, sitch me!”

 

As the rat chattered away, the evil lieutenant sighed, “You’re too perceptive, doofus.”

 

“Maybe KP is a good influence on you.” Was all he said before whatever the bald rodent said got him moving right into the smoky fray. “Um… Shego? Why is it just Drakken and one other guy?”

 

Shego rose from her crouch with more authority than she actually felt in her weakened condition, “Yeah Drakken… where’s the greasy goon squad?”

 

The blue man sputtered, looking around himself futilely, “Well, I thought they were here… they were a few minutes ago!”

 

The brunette growled dangerously and took a step forward, for a moment able to ignore her ailments in the heat of imminent victory. Outside, tires squealed to a halt near the front of the house, far closer than they had parked.

 

She took another step towards the cerulean madman. “You hear that you blue dork?! If I don’t get you, someone else will… So, five seconds, where’s the cure? Maybe I’ll let you walk out of here under your own power.”

 

“Y- you don’t fright- frighten me, you’re depowered! Harmless, shameless even! Partnered with your own worst enemy because you’re worthless on your o- own.” He sputtered with half-bravado, pointing a damning finger.

 

“I don’t need powers to take down a flabbster with mommy issues, Drakken,” She raised a fist, tightening her glove over it with her other hand.

 

“Wh- whoever you are, get her!” the madman barked, gesturing at the livid woman stepping through the exploded wall.

 

The hench took a look between the two, did some quick mental math, and promptly ran off through the kitchen door at right angles to both.

 

“And with that, your five seconds are up,” Shego launched herself at Drakken, tackling him to the floor mercilessly, ignoring the screaming of the joints in her body at fever and fatigue. “Cure, Now!”

 

She gave him two extra seconds, then punched him in the side of the head, her own hand screaming in pain as it felt like every knuckle was filled with broken glass. “Cure, Now!”

 

She gave him another few seconds, and then smacked him in the face, “Cure, Now!”

 

Another couple of ticks, or so she supposed, and Shego punched him in the other side of the head, pinning him with her body weight, “Cure, Now!”

 

“Hitting me in the h- head i- ish not a good w- way to get a comp- - plex f- formula, Shigo.” He mumbled, clearly concussed as he squirmed beneath his attacker.

 

“Good Point,” She spat out a fetid breath, reeking of vomit, and reached down, snapping one of his fingers, hoping it felt as bad to him as her body did to her. “Cure, Now!”

 

Getting no affirmative response, she looked around. Her eyes, after a moment, settled on Anne Possible’s butcher block full of knives. Grunting and forcing herself to her feet, she shambled over to the block and selected the first blade her hand landed on, a steak knife.

 

Turning back, she glared lividly, loathing what she had been reduced to. Stumbling back, she flopped downwards at his side and drew the blade over one of his trembling black latex gloves, revealing blue skin and a snip of pink trickling blood beneath.

 

“Cure me, and I’ll leave them intact. If not… well, you can see how shakey I’m getting, I might just slip, and plunge it into your he- heart.”

 

“Shego. Stop.”

 

The villainess’s hand froze in the air where she held the knife. She managed to turn her head after frustratedly ordering her hand to move and failing, and found Kim leaning against the door sill, looking every bit as green as she herself once had.

 

“Leggo Princess! I need the cure! For you, for me!”

 

Beneath her, realizing Shego had somehow been leashed, Doctor Drakken began to squirm free.

 

“Drakken, Freeze. But remember to breathe.” The teenager glared lasers in  the madman’s direction, locking him in place beneath Shego.

 

“H- how did you get here, P- pumpkin?”

 

“Yori drove, I navigated.” Kim held herself up against the wall. “Now Stop. Please… Don’t k- kill him.”

 

“Bubblebutt, I HAVE to,” Shego’s body was becoming sluggish, fighting her will to even turn her head; and she wasn’t sure if it was the illness from Drakken’s concoction, or Kim’s repeated commands to stop what she was doing, nor was she sure which she hated more. “This is the second time he cut me out and this time it’s killing me. What happens next time? Third time’s the charm?”

 

Drakken desperately wanted to laugh in both of their faces, especially at the tender new nickname, but unlike Shego, he was utterly frozen by a command verbatim, forced to sit and watch and listen.

 

“But we have him, Sheshona…” Kim sighed, trying to resist the urges of her body to sleep, perhaps forever. “And without you… he will not be able to do anything else. Isn’t that right, drakken?”

 

“Oh absolutely!” the indigo themed insane found himself chipperly answering, much to his own disgust.

 

“See?” She pointed irritably, “Now, Mister Drew Theodore Lipsky… Where is the cure to the concoction you made?”

 

Livid as he was at the dressing down and stripping of his villainous moniker, Drakken was hopelessly compelled to respond, “Left jacket pocket, three vials full. One Dose Each Vial, using a standard auto-injector in my right pocket.”

 

Kim scowled at that. “Do you have any more?”

 

“No”

 

“shit.” She spat, crumbling to the floor, the last of her iron will sapped by the shattering news, “We’re all three dying. Bonnie and the others won’t be far behind…”

 

“Language, Princess,” Shego wearily chided, having managed to will herself to roll off of Drakken’s frozen form, “just order him to make more.”

 

“Oh Doy… of course,” She groaned, and gave the command, before lapsing into unconsciousness again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: Yes… it really is a new chapter… after sevenish years? Those of you still reading after all this time? You deserve a medal! Those of you just coming to the story? Welcome! And remember as always: Reviews = Love and Resharing is Caring!


	24. Aftercare

Two days later, in the hospital, and Kim Possible was still fighting to recover.

She'd spent almost a full day in a mild coma before the antidote finally stopped her seizures. Once she was awake, Ron filled her in on how things had gone at the house.

She had been so focused on stopping Shego from murdering… no maybe that wasn't the right word, Drakken had come directly at her and her friends and deserved bad things happening to him… Stopping Shego from executing, yes, executing Drakken. So focused on halting that, that she didn't even realize her family, and friends, and Bonnie; they had been huddled in one corner of the kitchen, trying to use the chaos of the explosion to escape.

And they had seen her sickly grey-green and turning into a ragdoll before their eyes after she had issued her commands to Drakken and Shego. Worse, in her mind at least; they'd heard her call Shego by her given name.

Ron had injected Shego and Kim and Yori with the three doses of antidote in Drakken's pockets; but only on the practically screaming orders of Shego that one, they would all three shortly die without it, and two, that Drakken would make more under pain of Kim.

With Yori out of the slightly wrecked car they had borrowed, the one she had had another seizure behind the wheel of, leading to their screeching stop when Kim clumsily smashed the brakes from the passenger seat; the three women had been taken to the hospital.

"And then the bottle rockets exploded in the yard and Rufus jumped out of my pants… Which is a good thing, cause I almost made a mess in them," the blonde recounted the tale of trilithium powered soda bottles with stacks of quarters as nose weights.

"You, Out."

Ron looked about to make a quip about Shego's use of two words again after her ranting at Drakken, but a glare sent him scurrying. Besides, he'd been monopolizing Kim's awake time for most of a day now, and felt sure Kim's mom would be along soon to shoo him out anyway.

"A cane, She- Shego?" Kim had to stop herself using her name again. Apparently she was still groggy and not thinking or with her own hormones in control.

And her hair was still blonde, too.

Shego, likewise, had not become green again; still just a rich olive tan, albeit perhaps a bit paler from her ordeal. She leaned a bit on an ornate black cane with some sort of round green knob on top. It was far too large for it to be a gem; but then again Kim knew that with Shego and her thieving ways, anything was likely.

"Malachite, Princess…" she tapped the marbled knob on the rail of the teen's bed to demonstrate, "One of my favorites. I'm a bit wobbly on my feet for the moment, so I had it ordered in. Now, we need to talk."

The heroine swallowed, because it wasn't the angry declaration she was expecting. Shego spoke quietly, almost conspiratorially, as she turned and latched the door.

"Look, Shesho-,"

"Nononononono." Shego clacked her elegant cane on the floor of the hospital room and glared. "Shego. Always Shego. And no more bubblbutt."

"But what about the other ni-,"

"Oh my god you are such a White Suburban Princess." The villainess grunted tiredly, closing her eyes. "Mind control? Hormone manipulation? Terminal illness? Any of that ringing a bell? If not, your bracelet spells it all out."

"Would you shut up and let me finish?"

Both women stopped, waiting to see if Kim still had the power to compel.

"Nope." Shego grinned a bit smugly, leaning on her cane after a moment of willing herself past the mild impulse to be quiet. "Nice try Pumpkin, but you're losing your powers… and mine are coming back."

A flick of her fingers generated a small green flame. It was no bigger than a gas station lighter, but it was there at least. "Look Pumpkin, what went between us is nothing more than two fucked-up ships passing in the night. Tell your idiot boyfriend, don't tell him; I don't care."

"…" Kim didn't like any of it, but she swallowed her swirling emotions because she clearly was not thinking right yet, let alone straight. "I suppose you're right. Anything else you want to say?"

"Since I'm bolting once we're done here? I suppose so. Let's see here, sounds like Doofus boy-,"

"Ron," Kim growled, crossing her arms over her chest, "His name is Ron. "

"His name is Sushi-bait as far as I'm concerned," Shego snorted, shaking her head, "After all, I could practically smell him on her breath, and there's the little matter of her wearing his clothes and dying her hair, but whatever. RON left off with us getting taken to the hospital."

The heroine scowled at the insinuations, but nodded.

"So, Drakken worked on more antidotes. Your track record seems to still be about 24 hours. One day and he bolted." The villainess rolled her eyes. "He didn't get very far of course, about twenty yards. Anyway, he made probably two dozen doses of the stuff. Enough for everyone affected in the immediate area; and enough that your turbo-nerd and the doctors could reverse-engineer it and make more. Looks like we escaped without any fatalities, Imaginary Skyfriend be praised."

Again the teen bit her tongue at the vitriol. Why was she trying to keep Shego's attentions again?

Taking a moment to center herself, she opened her eyes, "You stayed around and helped us when you could have run the moment you woke up with some semblance of health. Why stay?"

Breathing out irritably, the villainess closed her eyes, "Well, you wouldn't let me hurt Drakken, and by the time I was free of your commands, he was in Global Justice custody. I had nothing better to do, Cheerleader. But now that the cure has been distributed, I'm getting the hell out of Dodge. I'm still a wildly wanted criminal you know."

Kim shook her head softly, sighing, "I know. So, back to the old grind for both of us?"

"I dunno… almost getting killed AND having my powers stripped away, Princess? Maybe I need a change of pace. We'll see when I recover fully." Shego rose to her feet from the guest chair and grinned down at the former redhead, "You?"

"Oh, you know me," Kim grinned in spite of her occasional brain flutters, "Can't keep me down. What's a little thing like massive neurological trauma and bleached follicles between friends?"

"Friends?"

Kim looked over to respond to that, but Shego had vanished, despite the supposed weak knees and cane.

"Damn it."

_ ** KP-KP-KP-KP-KP ** _

When Kim got home a day later, it was true; Shego was gone. Her catsuit was gone. The guest room looked as if no one had occupied it in a week. Even the Lunabat cuddlebuddy was gone.

Kim took that as a sign that perhaps all her thoughts and consideration hadn't been in vain. That maybe there was a shred of humanity inside Sheshona Elsbeth Go that went beyond caring for herself.

Or maybe she just wanted a mascot.

Still, she had more important and immediate things to worry about now that she was finally free of the hospital and twice daily EEGs. For one thing, there was the matter of Bonnie Rockwaller and her cousin Larry.

"Fffff…." She caught herself. That was one side effect of living around Shego for a few days she did not need. Her mother was already looking at her crosswise. "Cripes! How did that happen? What am I supposed to do about it? Should I do anything at all? Bonnie is dangerous after all…"

She knew she was projecting. That what was going on between the impossibly nerdy Possible and the queen bee of Middleton High was just a surrogate for what she needed to have out with Ron and Yori.

But she had decided it would wait a few days more. Just as her hair was still blonde, and she still had vestiges of the ability to compel people; Yori's eyes were still black as charcoal, and she was still having issues controlling her impulses.

Example one, she was still IN Middleton rather than having returned to Japan. She was also still IN the hospital, having been exposed to multiple doses of Drakken's foot-stone chemical, compared to Kim and Shego and many others who had been hit only once by the various products.

So that ferocious mess could wait until everyone concerned was a bit less tweaked and dyed.

Besides, she didn't like the power she had over other people. It made her feel like an alien in her own body, and the sooner her ability to suggest was gone, the better as far as she was concerned. For Yori to be almost wholly out of control of her own impulses, rather than just having the temptation to get her own way with a command, must be a nightmare worthy of Oedipus.

And then there was the mess at Global Justice. Agent Du and all those others, plus that undercover man the tweebs had brained… Kim herself was weary of heading back out into the field so soon, between the flaxen hair and the still lingering suggestive powers. Yet, if GJ was knee-capped even worse, with multiple people down? Will Du was supposedly bald as Rufus, if not more so, and afflicted by juvenile behaviors. And Betty Director trying to ride herd over that; well at least her hair dye had turned out to be store brand…

Kim felt her mind beginning to swim and took a seat on the couch with a heavy flop. A storm of emotions at the maddening scale washed over her. Shego was right about that at least; it was all hormones and she was still in their thrall.

Breathing deeply, the former redhead centered herself, concentrating on the rhythm of her respiration to the exclusion of all else. It was a task, as her brain still swirled with colors and emotions, many of which she was not sure were her own.

"Hey KP, Naco run?"

And her concentration exploded in shards. Tortilla chip shaped shards.

She wanted to scream at Ron for barging into her solitude; but she realized a bit of normalcy, and some brain-soothing fatty food, might be what she needed right now after all. "Sure Ron, let me get my purse."

_ ** KP-KP-KP-KP-KP ** _

"That was weird…"

"You're telling me, I mean, the Enchirito Pequeño? It was like… all shell, no meat, no cheese, no sauce."

"Well it saves them mone- no Ron!"

Kim rolled her eyes, almost drawn off into one of her boy- her frien- her part-

Ugh, her head started spinning and whirling again!

Pinching the bridge of her nose, she sighed, "No, I meant Bonnie… not sniping me from across the room like Colonel Sheppard in your Effective Mass games. It's like she… I dunno?"

"Like she still can't lie?" Ron posited as he considered the still somewhat pale ingénue who had been seated in the Bueno nacho when they arrived.

"Mmmmmm, maybe?" the former ginger pondered, some of her flaxen locks under a purple Maddogs' ball cap. "But no… No, She took the cure same as I did… at this point she _should_ be back to her usual catty snide conniving lying backstabbing-,"

"KP? You're losing the crowd?"

"Erm, right, sorry Ron. But you know what I mean." Kim shook her head and sighed, trying to order the rage train that had come spewing out of her mouth, "Bonnie being civil is almost as wrong sick as She-,"

Whatever Kim was about to say was swallowed up as an oculus opened and swallowed her from next to the take-out-taco sign which she had been leaning on.

When things stabilized, she found herself at the desk of Betty Director; who seemed a bit more grey than she had four days prior.

"Miss Possible," the monocular director studied the blonde heroine, "I wish I had time to be civil, but I don't: Where is Shego?"

"In the wind. She and her stuff were gone when I got out of the hospital. Mom and Dad say they never saw her leave." Kim swallowed the wave of conflicting emotions that roiled with almost physical force through her mind.

"Kim, I've heard some disturbing rumors in the past three days." Doctor Director inhaled slowly, "Rumors about you, and Shego, and this strange alliance you formed in the face of Drakken. Not very complimentary things. So if you know where she is, believe me when I say that some misguided teenage infatuation is-,"

The whirling maelstrom of conflicted thoughts in the teen's mind crystalized suddenly into one overriding emotion; _Disgust_. What she did or did not feel or think about Shego, or anyone else for that matter, was none of this woman's business.

She had enough on her mind and on her plate between Ron, Yori, Shego, Bonnie, and Larry, without some one-eyed bureaucrat chiming in on the matter. She narrowed her two good eyes at the woman and fixed her resolution.

"Shego saved my life. And the lives of my family, my friends, and _your_ agents; and she did it when your own inside man got taken out by a couple of fourteen year olds with a pipe wrench. And while terminally ill herself." The fair-haired heroine pointed a damning finger at the space between them. "And frankly, we all owe her for it. Now I don't know about you and how things in the super-secret spy organization world work, but me personally? I don't want Shego holding a favor over my head for collection at a later and probably more dangerous date."

Kim focused all her will on any remaining dregs of her chemically imbued powers, fixing green eyes on the Director's one brown one. "So I chose to cash it in now on her behalf. Shego needs a pardon in return for what she did. Now I don't know how far your reach goes, but I am pretty sure that _Global Justice_ can put out the word at least in the United States and its territories that Shego is not to be touched for her past crimes. I'd say that between being a teenage hero once, and now having saved the world, she's earned a bit of leniency. Besides, near as I can tell, being a supervillain, by itself, is not actually a crime. And that means most of her offenses are larceny and theft… Hardly worthy of hunting down by an organization on this level, am I right?"

"I don't stand for barked orders, Miss Possible,"

Clearly Doctor Director was fixing her own arguments, so the teen decided to push more, again commanding up any last vestige of her suggestions. "I didn't bark anything… but if you want, I'll make it an ultimatum. I've got a website and I'm not afraid to use it. Put out the word on Shego, or I blow the lid off of Global Justice… Everything, from Gemini, to the Ron Factor, to how you're using a teenage girl to run ops for you, to that stupid orange taco-powered monster program Project Titan. It'll be ferociously harsh, and who do you think the world will believe, the teenage heroine who saves the day before homework? Or the clandestine spy agency that flushes people down tubes?"

There was a tense, terse silence that permeated the room. Finally, after a long moment, the greying Director sighed.

"Granted. And don't expect any more support or calls from us, Miss Possible. I don't need teenage experimentation clouding up my assignments."

Before Kim could object to the very charged assessment, she was whooshed away from the office the same way she came in.

"Ron," She complained, the last dregs of her emotions washing out of her, leaving behind just a headache that she hoped was from her medication, "Take me home. I think I just bailed out a felon and burned a really big connection, and I'm pretty sure I got called a horny lesbian. I'm officially done for today."

"Uhhhh, K.O. K.P." Ron nodded confusedly. "So is this a bad time to mention that while you were away, Wade called with a mission?"

"So totally a bad time." The teen nodded wearily. "But, I can do anything, which totally sounds braggy right now, so sitch me."

Wade appeared on the kimmunicator as if he had been listening in, which he probably had. "Himalayas. DNAmy has whipped up a cross between a monkey, a rabbit, and a squirrel, and is calling it the Cutest Thing Yeti."

"Well, if there's no people around, I suppose I can be convinced… maybe some of that Himalayan sea salt caramel chocolate I hear tell about?" She said hopefully.

"I'll have some on the plane, ride's there in ten minutes; it's Nantu." Wade confirmed as he had already started working.

"Right, with the Sherpa team at that marathon thing they do!" Kim remembered and smiled, "Okay, this is doable. And Ron? Keep your cargo's on. I'm one wardrobe malfunction away from following Shego into hiding."

_(Cue Credits)_

_ ** KP-KP-KP-KP-KP ** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus ends Kim Possible: A Blonde Moment.
> 
> After eleven years, with a reboot on the horizon, it has been a long journey for all of us! I had originally intended a longer sequence with Doctor Director, Kim, Will Du, and Stan; maybe even anothewr whole chapter including Shego. But ultimately, it was a bit of a downer; and even harsher than just this exchange. So in the interests of wrapping the story I dropped that angle; and also tried to inject a lil more humor. It would have played in to a planned sequel which would have focused on Kim, Shego, and Anne's hidden history (what, you thought a forty-year-old brain surgeon just kept up on Kim on Mother's Day?) Those of you who went to the Slash Haven when it is operational have probably read a few of the stories about Kim and Shego's future. I don't know, but I doubt I will get around to that story, but we never know. 
> 
> THANK YOU for reading along with me on this long and winding trail, and please feel free to chime in now or after the epilogue on how this Kigo story hit you, what you liked, what you didn't, etc.
> 
> But don't worry! An Epilogue is coming during the credits. And also maybe one or two oneshots. I have a few scraps written that go along with this continuum.


	25. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ATTENTION: If you've only read this story here on AO3 prior to July 22, 2018  
> Then you missed out on Chapter 22 "Penultimatum" because it got lost in the transfer from one site to the other. Please feel free to go back and check it out!

It had been two months since her cosmetic mishap. Kim’s hair was still platinum blonde, and still stubbornly refused to take dye. Wade said that scans showed her locks had been chemically altered by the Lather Rinse Obey shampoo to closely resemble plastic. Short of using fabric dye on her hair and scalp, what hair she had would continue to be silvery-gold.

 

But, red roots _were_ beginning to show now. Mostly anyway. Obsessive examinations with a hand mirror showed that she was probably always going to have a few lighter streaks; but in a few months’ time at least, she would be back to being a ginger. Her nigh-magical ability to control the thoughts and actions of others had completely abated.

 

That left her with mixed feelings; while she was glad to be rid of the alien abilities and the temptations they provided, as well as the swarming and swirling emotions that were not always her own… but still, the ability to silence arguments and freeze criminals with but a word were handy.

 

But that way temptation and madness lay. She wondered if that was why Shego had become a supervillainess; if the ability to do things beyond the bounds of mortals had somehow corrupted her. It was certainly seductive to have that kind of power.

 

The intervening eight weeks had not been slow ones. Kim had a week of homework to catch up on for one thing, and the fallout of the events of the Drak-co products was wide.

 

Some had, inevitably, leaked into low-rent warehouses, where unscrupulous vendors relabeled them or peddled them to bargain stores, and it took a month to find everything. Even Wade himself didn’t escape unscathed.

 

Some unknown products were out there, and the tech guru had accidentally tried one; “Wonder Spot Remover” was an acne crème.

 

Oh it made spots disappear alright, along with everything else it was applied to. Wade’s entire face turned transparent, rendering him a ghoulish fiend of muscle and bone until the antidote kicked in and restored his flesh to its normal chocolate tone. If he would have been afflicted by any unusual physical or psychological effects was unknown as the cure was able to be applied so fast, but Kim nearly lost her cereal when he called her in a panic and she saw his teeth, tongue, and cheek muscles all working as he babbled at her and his eyes seemingly unblinking orbs in the front of his skull.

 

And even with Drakken in prison and Shego gone to ground, Kim and Ron were kept busy more or less from the moment they were out of the hospital’s grasp. Camille Leon, Frugal Lucre, The Mathter, the Fashionistas, the insane Nanny Nane, and even Señor Senior Junior kept their feet to the ground around the world.

 

Kim had hoped that during their stop in Go City with the Mathter, she might have run into Shego; might have been able to talk about their lives post-drakken… but the villainess had been nowhere in evidence.

 

Then there was the whole college sitch. Kim had trouble focusing on where she wanted to go, and her parents each heavily advocating for their specialized alma maters only worsened the stress. And then Dementor had broken into the MIST campus while she was there and there had been this whole thing involving purple goo all over her body. She briefly suffered a panic attack, certain that when it finally came off, her body would be horrifically modified again.  Fortunately, aside from some impromptu personal grooming by way of purple-goo waxing, nothing came out blonde, or purple, or green when the goop came off.

 

_Beep beep bee beep!_

 

“Go Wade.” Kim flipped up her stylish new wrist kimmunicator as she balanced her books in her free hand.

 

“Code Blue, Kim.”

 

“WHAT?!” the redhead’s eyes went wide, her pulse accelerating, “Who’s dying?! Where are they?!”

 

“What?! No, no!” Wade flushed a dusky color, embarrassed by forgetting Kim’s mom was a doctor and that code blue might mean something entirely different between the two of them, “Sorry, I meant blue as in Skin. Someone broke Drakken out of prison.”

 

“Okay, well, that’s concerning,” Kim’s heart rate dropped by a few beats per minute, but she kept attuned.

 

Drakken may have confessed to being helpless without Shego’s assistance, but that didn’t actually mean he was. Cases in point; the drak-co products and the diablobots.

 

“It gets worse, Kim,” Wade continued as though reading the heroine’s mind, “Reports are was that he was broken out by a woman with green skin.”

 

The teen’s heart sank more than she cared to admit. Shego had been quiet since the hospital, and no one had seen or heard of her in the intervening eight weeks. She had somewhat suspected Shego would go back to crime.

 

But to go back to Drakken?

 

Her heart slowing and hardening, the eighteen year old glared at the Kimmunicator, “Get me a ride to the Prison.”

 

“And Ron?”

 

The blonde shook her head, “No. If Shego is back with Drakken, it’s personal. And it’s ugly. And I don’t want Ron involved. He’s still pretty tweaked about how sick Yori and me got.”

 

“Alrighty, I can get Misses Hutchinson there in fifteen minutes to drive you out to Middleton Maximum Security.” The hacker confirmed with a grim look on his face. “And Kim? Be careful.”

 

**_ KP-KP-KP-KP-KP _ **

 

Given how many people she had sent here over the years, it was unsurprising that Kim was given free run of the prison when she arrived. She snickered to herself. Maybe if they’d put her in charge instead, she wouldn’t have to keep sending people here every time they got out.

 

Shaking off the snide thought, the teen made her way to the recreation room. Interviewing Pyro Pete and Big Tony about what they had seen. They confirmed the initial reports that a strong green woman throwing around green energy had indeed come looking for Drakken.

 

Then she got down to her own villains.

 

Frugal Lucre did nothing but crow about beating Drakken in Checkers in a narrow thing.

 

Motor Ed turned out to throw a curve ball into the running theory, though.

 

“Green babe? Seriously Red, check your intel,” the mullet-wearing madman shook his own golden locks, “Chick was like, nine feet tall or some junk. Shego may be mean, but she don’t tower over me like some Miami Tranny. By the way, love the new look, seriously!”

 

Kim winced at the slanderous term and the backhanded compliment, but paid attention. Motor Ed was very… strange; but he wasn’t one to imagine things like nine foot tall women.

 

The evidence also didn’t seem to add up. There was a twelve foot wide hole blown in the ceiling, and debris and broken equipment everywhere. In the teen’s experience, Shego was a professional thief and mercenary. She didn’t tend to blow things up or blast people out of the way unless she was forced to. Heck, the first time Kim had encountered the emerald villainess at all, it was on grainy security camera footage which she had immediately destroyed to avoid being tracked.

 

She still remembered Ron’s fifteen year old crush and woof sounds at the older woman in skin tight spandex.

 

Making her way to the security hub in the center of the building, Kim prepared to see if she could find the woman on video again.

 

“Well, hello Princess… just figuring out it wasn’t me? Or do you need me to catch you up? Because it wasn’t me.”

 

Sheshona Elsbeth Go was reclining lazily in an office chair, with her booted feet kicked up on a console. In addition to her green and black catsuit, she was wrapped in a familiar green trench coat against the late spring rain.

 

Kim felt a familiar swim of emotions swarm through her body.

 

Her eyes lingered on Shego’s shapely legs just a second longer than they should, and she remembered the faintly electric taste of hot black painted lips on hers.

 

But she also remembered the dozen times this woman had tied her to death rays, and tiger pits, and shark tanks; and the snide, cutting insults hurled back and forth with full force.

 

Shaking her head to try to clear the war of feelings, she cocked her hip to one side and held herself ready just in case Shego tried something, “I’m starting to get that opinion, but I’m still not convinced… I mean, according to Wade, there’s only two green women in the western hemisphere.”

 

“Point one, I wasn’t in the hemisphere, I was in Greece.” Shego rolled her eyes irritably and ticked off a finger, “Point two, I’m still not green yet. Oh, and point three? It’s Fucking Drakken, the guy I tried to kill for doing this to me.”

 

Kim watched the tan brunette closely, assessing her words against her expression. Indeed Shego was _still_ a Mediterranean olive tan, despite her electrically green eyes and familiar supervillain catsuit.

 

“You tried to kill me and Ron before too, Shego. Like a couple dozen times.” Kim matched the eye roll, “So forgive me if I wonder a bit.”

 

“Hey, attempted herocide is different from attempted homicide, Bubblebutt.” The older woman glared, kicking her feet to the floor and rising at the insinuation.

 

Kim raised her fists at the sudden movement, a years’-old response to Shego moving quickly. But then she stopped, “You… you said no more Bubblebutt talk.”

 

“Crap. On a cracker,” Shego palmed her face, sighing into her hand.

 

“You…” the once-and-future redhead eyed the villainess archly, “You still feel it to, don’t you?”

 

“Feel what? An intense desire to knock your teeth in?”

 

The heroine knew Shego well enough to know that that was bluster rather than threat. “You still feel the attraction.”

 

“It was all hormones and pheromones, Buttercup.” The taller woman countered.

 

 “I lost the last of my commanding powers weeks ago; hormones and pheromones too.” Kim refuted, “Besides, why do you keep looking me up and down?”

 

“Because I miss your freakin’ bellybutton, okay?!” Shego snapped out, raking a hand through her dark hair. “You changed your outfit and got rid of my favorite feature. Damnit, yes, I still feel… something. And you know what sucks? I can’t figure it out. I can’t stand your bubblegum ways, but I can’t stand not ravishing you either.”

 

Kim chewed her lip, watching the other woman for a long moment. “We could figure it out together, you know.”

 

“What about your boyfriend?” the sneer was evident in Shego’s voice even as she turned back to the monitors she had been working on.

 

“Ron and I are… I dunno… on a break or something.” Kim admitted after a moment. “See, we kinda realized something wasn’t there.”

 

“Like what? The fact that he keeps his penis in his pocket and lets it roam free?” the villainess sniped as she looked for evidence to prove she wasn’t the perpetrator.

 

Kim wasn’t sure if she should giggle, or be righteously offended on Ron’s behalf. Shego clearly still confused her emotions, even absent the shampoo. She settled on ignoring the barb.

 

“No, Shego. Desire. That’s what was missing. I hate admitting it, but I see it when Ron and Yori look at each other.” Sighing, the once-redhead moved across the distance from the door to Shego’s chair. “I can’t say why it’s not there… but it’s just… not.”

 

“So what, you want to try the other side?” Shego avoided looking at the teen, concentrating on her file examinations.

 

“Damnit Elsbeth!” Kim grabbed Shego and forced her to turn and face her.

 

Instead of trying to explain the storm of conflict inside her head and chest, the teen grabbed the back of Shego’s head and pulled her into a fiery kiss. At first the taller woman resisted at the intrusion. But within a few seconds she gave in to the same war and returned the kiss hungrily.

 

After a heated moment, Kim broke off and glared, “See? I don’t know a lot, but I know that is desire. And I think you feel it too.”

 

“…” After several minutes, Miss Go looked away bitterly, “I don’t want to be your college experimentation, Bubblebutt.”

 

“and I don’t want to be a blonde!” Kim snapped, weary of tearing at Shego’s walls so easily clapped in place. “But I want to figure out what this is between you and me, and I know you do too. Now, do you want to go to dinner after we get this sorted out with the prison?”

 

Sighing, Shego relented, “I already did sort it out. It looks like he was literally abducted by aliens.”

 

She pointed to the frames she had been feverishly going over while avoiding Kim. In one was an honest-to-goodness giant woman, with impossible curves, wielding some sort of green energy weapon.

 

“I don’t think we need to worry about him for a while.” She smirked, “I’ll bet your nerd can confirm that the ship that took him made a bee-line away from Earth.”

 

Kim smiled in spite of herself. That was maybe the first really good news she’d had today. “So, Chez Pierre? It’s the nicest place in Middleton.”

 

“No, I’m thinking dinner in Athens. I interrupted a very expensive massage to come back here, and Midas has the, ah, golden touch.” Shego challenged. “And maybe after dinner, some dancing.”

 

Smiling more broadly, the teenager nodded, “It’s a start.”

 

_(End Credits Scene)_


End file.
